And All Their New Beginnings
by Daughter of Atlas
Summary: A series of challenge stories based on the 52 LJ prompts. JimPam. Chapter 11: Five games that changed a relationship; because it's not about winning or losing, it's about how many pranks you can pull along the way.
1. memory of a drowned moon

**Title: **Jam fluff

**Series:** The Office

**Theme No.:** 52; speechless with the memory of a drowned moon

**Pairing: **Jim/Pam

**Rating: **PG-13

**Notes: **This takes place at the tail end of Season 3, in the little margin of time between 'Beach Games' and 'The Job'.

* * *

Waking up alone was a familiar feeling, and that was the worst part.

Jim knew the stages of it like he knew his favorite song; hopelessness was comfortable, a second skin, and when despair came he greeted it as an old friend. It was beginning to happen more often, now that he was back in Scranton. The old feeling of hollowness was taking advantage of his weakness when Karen was away on business trips, and sometimes even when she wasn't.

Because Jim was too much of a gentleman to admit it to himself, but he was using Karen, as a shield and a distraction. What they had built between them had worked, for a while; there was love in their kisses, and passion, and if it wasn't the kind of love that reached inside of you and wrenched your soul from the inside out like sunshine and cocaine, well, it wasn't just a schoolyard crush, either.

There had been enough love and hunger and real human contact to fill up the empty places inside and hold back reality. And it had been so long since Jim had been in love (at least, the kind of love you could taste and touch), that for a while he had been happy.

But then the old emptiness started coming back again, padding into his apartment (Jim could not think of it as _theirs_) on silent paws at two-thirty in the morning, and Jim woke up alone. He was always alone, even with Karen stretched out beside him, hogging the covers and murmuring in her sleep, real in every way but one.

Sometimes he laid back in bed and gazed at the ceiling, trying to stare through it to the stars, and those were the brave times. He let himself feel it, all of it, let the howling demons come crowding into his mind one after another, pounding and rushing and screeching until it made his muscles ache. He challenged the shame and the anger, he met them and battled with them and lost; he fed them platitudes, of how happy his life was, how great Karen was, how he could start again, renew, move on. And still they came, until he knew them each by name, and how they tormented him. Anger like a breach between the chambers of his heart. Regret; sour yogurt on his tongue, stale sweat clinging to his skin, all the things he'd ever hated in himself. Despair like the moon on still water, like the full moon on Lake Scranton and betrayal and truth.

Sometimes it scared him. Then he got up, dressed in silence, and left; sometimes he went running, through darkness that might have been dangerous anywhere but Scranton, and sometimes he walked. Sometimes he tried to see how far he could go and how fast without falling to the ground, because he thought somehow that maybe the pain would be gone if he could just learn how not to breathe.

The adrenaline of these morning excursions usually managed to flood out anger, and regret faded with the night. But no matter how hard he ran, no matter how far he went and at what speed, no matter if he almost flew or if every fiber of his body wailed in pain, he could never quite exorcise all of the terrible aloneness. Some of it remained, lurking in the back of his mind, past where even dreams could reach it. Some things stayed with him always.

Despair, and the moon on still water…

He was going crazy. The sleeplessness was starting to wear on him, leaving circles under his eyes and crevices in his mind that not even heart-arresting amounts of coffee could combat. He was slacking off; at work, yes, but in everything else too. His iPod sat unused, gathering dust, and emails multiplied unanswered on his computer, and Karen worried about him and then grew sick of worrying and got angry instead and suggested he see a counselor or something, a doctor, to get sleeping pills – that or take up drinking.

Jim laughed, and made some witty retort, and that was enough. The words were always enough, with Karen. He had learned long ago that all he had to do was make a suave observation, botch a joke, and she latched on to the sound of his voice and it threw up a barrier between them -- between them and world -- as protection.

Banter sanded down the soft edges of things, gave a graceful escape from any situation without having to address the dark mire underneath. It was a way to focus their attention. When Jim was busy coming up with clever things to say, he wasn't in love with another woman; and Karen could hold on to her illusions as long as silence didn't force her to think about them. Jim's mouth was full of witticisms and then full of the taste of her lipstick, and if both were lies, he could only hope that they somehow canceled each other out.

The banter was necessary. Karen was too sharp, too brittle, too full of energy; she didn't handle silence well. She gripped it like a gun, with her hands clenched tight under her desk, trembling on a trigger, bracing herself for the backlash. The pressure of emptiness built up, built up, dying to explode, and Jim couldn't help but feel that it was always aimed right at his head.

So he talked, and she laughed, and they never really said anything, but that was all right; he was used to that. He was used to not saying anything, even if this was a different kind of denial than the one he'd been so good at before he moved to Stamford.

But he couldn't think about Stamford anymore, because now he was back in Scranton, and it took all of his strength just to deal with that, to deal with what the little Pennsylvania hamlet had become. It took all of his strength just to deal with how much things had changed…

Oh, how things had changed!

And then, one night, all the changes bubbled up to the surface and burned back into his brain everything he'd forgotten, and everything he had never been able to forget. Just when he'd been moving on – just when he'd gotten up the nerve to go to New York, Karen's kind of city, and live Karen's kind of life – just when he was starting to convince himself that he could feel normal again…

How could a single moment on a darkened beach destroy so much?

Sometimes Jim wished that it had been him instead of Dwight who had leaped fearlessly onto the coals, only to end up writhing in the embers with mild burns over most of his body. Then he could have gone home, and missed the moonlit confession. It would have been so much easier that way.

After the management-training games on the beach, Jim started waking up alone every morning, and he would leave Karen oblivious in the bed they shared, and he would go running through the sleeping city. Because the adrenaline helped, a little bit; and because he was almost able to convince himself that he was running towards something instead of merely running away.

And then, the day before he and Karen were due to drive up to New York and offer their lives up for sacrifice to Corporate, Jim returned from one of these morning excursions to find Karen already awake, dressed in her sleek lines-and-angles power suit, making breakfast. Panting, he sat down at the kitchen table and gripped his steaming mug of coffee in both hands, staring into the thin veils of vapor dancing above the rim as though they might part to show his future. And he barely noticed that Karen was talking, outlining plans and puns in her melodious voice, saying anything just to fill the silence.

He might have tried to answer her. But his mind was elsewhere; the adrenaline hadn't worked this time, the sunrise hadn't burned away the memory, and the feeling of _alone _was still with him, filling up his head with the heaviness of the sand on that beach and the murky darkness of that lake. Inside his skull the lakeshore night expanded, soaking through his thoughts like ink, pushing out all of the words and leaving only silence and despair.

Despair, which felt like the icy water soaking his socks as he waded out to where Pam stood, and didn't care about his shoes getting wet. Despair, which was him asking if her feet were all right and hoping madly in some terrible tiny part of him that she _had _been seriously burned, because then he might have gotten the chance to carry her in his arms.

Despair stayed with him; and it reminded him of that night in Lake Scranton, when he had looked at the new glowing determination in Pam's eyes, and he had looked beyond her to where the reflection of the moon drowned in the glass-black water, and he had not been able to decide which was the more beautiful.

He didn't break up with Karen until two days later, after the interview at Corporate had crystallized for him the utter mess that his life had become. But the day before he left, he sat in the kitchen of their (his) apartment, staring into his coffee, and suffered a slow, creeping sense of foreboding, like the near-silent fraying of a tenuous thread.

Karen was talking to him; she wasn't comfortable with silence, it always left too much unsaid, but she couldn't say those things either, because that might have wrecked them altogether. Instead she baited Jim with silly questions, teased him with playful insults, challenged him, mocked him; begged him to answer, because if he would then they could fall back into their familiar pattern of taunt and retort, and everything would be okay, she wouldn't be losing him, she wouldn't be fighting (for him or against him, she never knew which).

But Jim's head was full of clouds and stars and eyes that weren't Karen's; and the memory of that drowned moon sat heavy on his tongue, shackled his speech, emptied his eyes and left him capable of nothing more than lovesick despair and silence.

* * *

Review, please! 


	2. laws of variation

**Title: **Jam fluff

**Series:** The Office

**Theme No.:** 3; laws of variation

**Pairing: **Jim/Pam

**Rating: **PG-13

**Notes: **I have mixed feelings about this chapter. I love some of the bits -- Rule Four, for example, is the single best thing I think I've ever written in this genre. But I'm a little sketchy on Rule Five, and Rule Three makes me nervous because it's a step outside of my comfort zone. So treat this chapter kindly, please, and review. (Oh, and they're not in any specific order, so if you want to skip around, feel free. As I've said, I very much like Rule Four.)

By the way, thanks so much to all the reviewers of Chapter 1, who made my life a very happy place!

This takes place on a varying timescale… but it's all after Season 3; in other words, all of these take place while Pam and Jim are already dating.

* * *

**Rule One: The first rule of dating Pam is, you don't talk about dating Pam.**

When Pam accosted him later, in the elevator away from the prying eyes of the office, he explained to her that it had been her own fault. If she hadn't been giggling with Kelly in the break room, then he wouldn't have peeked into catch a glimpse of her smile, which was always so adorable when she was happy. And if she hadn't looked at him with that mischievous glint in her eye and that wicked grin, he wouldn't have gotten suspicious and decided to exact revenge (after all, how did he know that she wasn't gossiping about _him_?).

"You're _always _suspicious," she growled, frustrated by his Jim-logic, but there was still a smile in her eyes.

Jim grinned down at her, that roguish grin which he knew she couldn't resist. "How could I survive dating you if I wasn't?" he teased, idly pressing button after button until they were all lit up and blinking. The elevator shuddered and slowed, opening its doors on an empty floor; Pam raised an eyebrow at him, but he just grinned a little wider. He didn't mind making eight stops on the way to the ground floor if it meant more time alone in the elevator with her.

"You're a dork," she muttered; then her brow furrowed and her eyes grew stormy as she remembered that she was mad at him. "So you had an attack of paranoia and decided to get revenge on me by lying to _Dwight_?"

"No. Of course not." The relief on her face was palpable for a moment; then Jim stretched lazily, and shattered her security by saying calmly, "What makes you thing I was lying?"

"_What_?" She had been leaning against the wall of the elevator, pointedly not looking at him; now she whirled around to face him, flushed a bright red, whether from embarrassment or rage he couldn't tell. "You _told _him? I can't believe you! I thought we _agreed _on this – you promised! Jim Halpert, you – you –"

She trailed off, lost for words, her voice lost in her anger. Immediately Jim's roguish smile disappeared; all seriousness, he reached out and gripped her arms, pulling her closer.

"Hey, hey, calm down," he muttered, soothing. "I know what I promised. I didn't tell him, okay? I would never do that." Her expression of outraged betrayal softened, and Jim pressed his advantage. "Trust me, I don't want Dwight to find out about us dating any more than you do. _You_ don't have to sit across from him and listen to him mutter to himself all day."

Pam was more sullen than enraged now; she regarded him mistrustfully, still leaning back against his arms, refusing to let him pull her into an embrace. "I don't know, Halpert," she growled; the elevator ground to yet another unnecessary stop, and her voice echoed out into an empty hallway. "How do I know I can trust you? What exactly did you tell Dwight? I saw you – _conspiring _with him by the vending machines, and next thing I know he's following me around and trying to sneak a look at my faxes." She crossed her arms over her chest, glaring up at him with an expression that brooked no argument.

Jim sighed, and ran a hand through his hair. "So _nosy_. Fine, fine!" he said hurriedly, warding off Pam's wrath. "I just – I thought you and Kelly were talking about me, so I told Dwight you were talking about him."

Pam's expression didn't change; if anything, it grew fiercer, and Jim's desire to kiss her was overwhelmed only by his instincts of self-preservation. The unspoken question was clear: _what else_?

"Okay, fine," he grumbled, trying to hide his trepidation. "So _maybe _I told him that you and Kelly were in on a conspiracy by the women of the office to rebel and overthrow him and Michael, and _maybe _I told him that you had tried to seduce me to get me to tell you his secrets…"

"Jim!" Pam shrieked, forgetting her anger at him in the sudden flood of extreme embarrassment that drove her to hastily bury her flushed face in his shirt. "I can't believe you!" Suddenly she was in his arms; Jim chuckled and rested his chin on the top of her head, reaching out behind her to jab the Close Door button as the elevator ground down to the third floor. After all, she'd nearly eviscerated him for hinting to Dwight about their relationship. He couldn't imagine what she'd do if they were accidentally discovered because of an indiscreet elevator.

"I can't believe you said I'd _seduced _you!" she whimpered, her words muffled by his chest.

"I told you I didn't lie," he said laughingly, earning himself no more than another outraged squeal and punch on the arm.

"I hate you," she muttered, and under the embarrassment and the laughter and the false rage, Jim heard a note of genuine unhappiness.

"Look," he sighed, holding her at arm's length and meeting her gaze with as much certainty as he could muster. "I'm sorry about Dwight. I promise I'll hide his bobblehead tomorrow so he'll forget all about us, okay?" That earned him a smile, albeit a guarded one. "I'm sorry," he said again, "but I just can't help it. I mean, I'm going out with the greatest girl on the planet. How can I _not_ brag about it, especially when Dwight's being all obnoxious because he's a blackbelt num-chuck master or something?"

"We agreed that we would keep it a secret," Pam reminded him, as the elevator settled down the ground floor with one last defeated groan. "How do you expect to keep it a secret if you're dropping hints to Dwight, of all people?"

"Oh, don't worry," Jim assured her, trying the roguish grin again for effect. "Dwight's learned not to believe a word I say."

"Maybe he's on to something," Pam teased, as they left the building two paces apart, carefully not touching. "Still, I think it's time for an ultimatum. I can't go out with a man who tells all my secrets to Dwight K. Schrute."

They strolled across the empty parking lot to where their two cars were parked, side by side. Pam stopped and turned to face him again, and for a moment Jim forgot the people who might see them out of the office windows, their co-workers who would be coming out shortly and had the collective maturity of a kindergarten class. The whole world narrowed to the dimensions of the elevator; just the two of them, apart from the office, from Michael and Dwight and everything else.

"Okay, fine," Jim conceded. "I'll accept your ultimatum. I promise I won't rat us out to Dwight. After all, a gentleman doesn't kiss and tell."

Pam grinned a wicked grin and pressed up onto her tiptoes to kiss him, to test him. It was a brief, chaste kiss; but Jim wrapped his arms around her, pulled her closer, deepened the kiss and held her as she squealed against his lips and tried to squirm away.

When he finally released her she hit him, and tried her best to glare at him without smiling. "You don't even need to tell anyone to get us caught," she accused. Jim's puppy-dog pout mollified her somewhat, and she sighed. "We have to be a _secret_," she said again, patiently, as though trying to explain something simple to a stubborn child. "We have to at least be a secret at work. It's –" she checked her watch. "It's four fifty-one. We need to be a secret for nine more minutes. After that –" she smiled up at him, and Jim realized that he no longer had a monopoly on the roguish grin. "After that, we can do whatever we want."

Jim took a step back and opened her car door for her, holding it like the most genteel of knights bowing for a lady of the court. Pam snorted, but climbed in and rolled down the window, allowing him to close the door and peer in to check the clock on her dashboard; four fifty-two.

He grinned down at her and said, "I think I can live with that."

**

* * *

****Rule Two: A tie goes to the girlfriend**

"One, two, three, four, I declare – ow!"

"What?"

"You jabbed me with your thumbnail!"

"I did not."

"Yes, you did! Look, there's a mark."

"You're a big boy, Jim, I think you can handle it. Now stop being such a baby."

"Jerk. Do over, then. You start."

"Fine. One, two, three, four, I dec – hey! What was that for?"

"That, Beesley, was my revenge."

"That _hurt_!"

"Hah. Now who's being a baby?"

"Still you. Oh, don't give me that look, Halpert. You're the one who spent all of Saturday morning watching cartoons."

"A timeless American pastime!"

"Sure, for six-year-olds. Now quit stalling; we've got a bet to settle. Unless you're scared, of course…"

"Yeah right, Beesley, don't make me laugh. Ready? One, two, three, four, I declare a thumb war!"

"Hah! I win!"

"What? You did not win! You have to count to three! If anything, it was a tie."

"Tie goes to the girlfriend."

"Since when?"

"Since forever, Jim. Where have you been?"

"You're making that up. You made that up just now."

"I did not! Ask Dr. Phil. Or Michael. Or anyone. That's the rule."

"You get your relationship advice from Michael and Dr. Phil?"

"Oh, please, as if I need relationship advice. You couldn't get rid of me if you tried."

"That's what she said."

"Yes, that _is _what she said. She just said it. Weren't you paying attention?"

"Sorry. Your radiant beauty must have distracted me."

"Don't change the subject, Halpert."

"Right. What was the subject again?"

"Um… how pathetic you are, I think."

"Ah, that's old news. I got a better subject."

"Yeah? What's that?"

"Look over there."

"Okay..."

"Now, tell me what you see."

"Okay. Well, Darryl's giving Kelly a present… which is… a stack of pink cardstock with a ribbon around it. She'll probably use it to decorate her computer screen."

"What else?"

"Kevin's eating a Cup o' Noodles. And adding it the stack of empty cartons, which is starting to resemble the Giza Pyramids."

"Nice comparison, Beesley. What else?"

"Michael's yelling at Toby. And threatening him with a fork… and a carving knife? Who the hell gave Michael a carving knife?"

"Probably Dwight. But that's not important. You see the turkey that Michael snuck in under his coat and hid under his Ferris-Bueller-esque dummy?"

"Yes. What about it?"

"I'll bet you five dollars that there's not just stuffing inside."

"You're insane. Okay, fine, I'll take that bet."

"Oh, my God. What's Michael doing now?"

"At least he let Toby escape with his life. The last thing we need is another felony in this office."

"Shut up. Moment of truth. He's sticking the carving knife in the turkey…"

"Wow. Michael screams like a girl. Why doesn't that surprise me at all?"

"And now he's got something… he's waving it around… oh my, what could it be?"

"Don't be smug, Jim. It's not good on you. Okay, so you put a rubber chicken in Michael's turkey -- don't let it go to your head."

"That'll be five dollars, Beesley. Ah, yes, thank you. Now, would you care for another bet?"

"Why do I put up with you? Fine, but just because I'm bored."

"Excellent. I am more than happy to exploit your boredom. Now, five dollars says that the rubber chicken is not just an ordinary rubber chicken; it is not empty."

"What is an ordinary rubber chicken, anyway? … Oh, God, Michael is coming over here. Jim, why is Michael coming over here?"

"Shush, Beesley. Wait for it – yeah, thanks, Michael."

"What did he give you? What's that? What are you up to, Halpert?... oh. Oh, my God. That is… wow. I don't…"

"It's okay. You don't have to thank me. I know how awesome I am."

"Jim, I… I don't know what to say. Is that… are those diamonds real?"

"Happy Thanksgiving, Pam."

"Jim, you _dork_… you wonderful, wonderful dork."

"That'll be five dollars."

"What? No way, you rigged it! I'm not paying, it wasn't a fair bet! You didn't win!"

"Well, you didn't win either. Fine; we'll call it a tie."

"A tie goes to the girlfriend…"

"What, isn't a beautiful necklace enough for the girlfriend? The girlfriend sure is greedy."

"Oh, you ain't seen nothing yet. Come here, Halpert."

"Whoa, hey! Careful. We _are _in public, you know."

"Oh, they're all too worried about the turkey to care about us."

"In that case, you still owe me. You lost the bet."

"It was a tie…"

"… that goes to the girlfriend, I know. So what does the boyfriend get?"

"Oh, stop whining. Come here, and I'll show you."

* * *

**Rule Three: All's fair in love, war, and flonkerton**

It had started off as so many things in their life started, with a prank. They had been having a harmless discussion about the good old days, reliving some of their greatest past capers, because the office had been quiet for a while, and if that wasn't bad enough Andy and Dwight had caught Jim in the crossfire of their snowball fight in the parking lot that morning, so of course Jim needed revenge. But Jim claimed to be in a creative dry spell. He said that looking at his past successes would inspire him; so Pam had dutifully dug out the pictures she kept clipped together in her bottom drawer, the memos and faxes and emails she still held on to, and of course the yogurt-lid gold medal that still twirled gently at the end of its paperclip chain hung from a thumbtack stuck in the wall.

It was the gold medal that had started it all. That had, of course, been their finest hour, and the mere memory of it made Jim's eyes light up, as he met Pam's gaze and the same thought sparked between them like a lightning bolt. Without a word, Pam darted off to the storeroom to get together the necessary materials, while Jim very casually and calmly walked over to his desk and pulled the gloves he'd worn to work that morning out of his coat pocket.

With an experienced prankster's eye, he sized up his fellow office workers, recalling what he knew of their quirks and personalities. Immediately, he zeroed in on Andy and Dwight; neither of them had been present for the original Office Olympics, and both were spectacularly dependable when it came to rising to bait.

Jim grasped his glove in one hand and sat down at his desk as though nothing unusual had happened. He glanced out of the corner of his eye at Dwight, who was to all appearances working industriously. The click and clatter of his typing was momentarily drowned out as Andy, who was engaged in a vicious struggle with the vending machine over a stuck candy bar, let out a wordless growl of frustration.

Jim sighed and shook his head. "Such a shame about you and Andy," he commented, low enough so that only Dwight could hear; he tried to sound as genuinely regretful as he could. "I mean, really. I was just shocked."

Dwight didn't look up, and his voice was the monotone he used when he was trying not to get involved in what he called 'Jim's antics'. "I do not know what you are talking about, but I am sure it is irrelevant," he said curtly. "It is your job to sell paper. I suggest you return to that job, or I shall have to report you to your superior."

"All right, hey, that's okay," Jim answered, shrugging. "I understand. Losing is tough. If you don't want to talk about, that's fine by me."

There was a long moment of silence, devoid even of the clatter of Dwight's fingers on the keys. He finally said, with a voice as strong and cold as steel; "I do not understand this talk of losing. I have lost nothing. You are hallucinating."

"Ah, you mean you don't remember? Andy kicked your butt this morning in the parking lot. In the snowball fight. He _murdered _you."

Dwight went rigid, and for the first time he raised his eyes from the computer, fixing Jim with what could only be called a predatory stare. "Andy did not 'kick my butt', to use your slang. I was completely victorious over his weak and ineffective defense."

"I don't know, Dwight," Jim said doubtfully. "From where I was standing, it sure looked like he beat you. If you're fine with it, that's great, but I know that if it were me, I would want to get him back. Save some face, you know?"

"Ah. I understand what you are up to now, Halpert. You are trying to get me involved in one of your juvenile, irresponsible 'pranks'. It won't work. I am not a childish slacker like you, and I never will be."

Jim had been resting his hands on his keyboard, to give at least the flimsiest semblance of work. Now he leaned forward across his desk, his face a solemn mask. "I'm serious, Dwight. This is way beyond pranks. I mean, Andy insulted your honor. Are you really going to let something like that go? I thought you'd stand up for yourself, like a real regional manager. Instead, you're just going to let him get away with it… but then, I guess I shouldn't be surprised." He sighed and leaned back in his chair, shaking his head. "I mean, what did I really expect from a manager's assistant?" He returned to his game of Spider Solitaire, with a defeated sigh.

"Andy Bernard cheated," Dwight snarled between gritted teeth.

Jim didn't look up again; he only shook his head. "All's fair in war, Dwight," he said, resigned. "Even if he cheated, that doesn't change the fact that he won."

At this point, several things happened at once. Andy managed to shake the vending machine violently enough that it discharged his candy with a defeated groan; his shout of victory echoed throughout the office. Dwight's head shot up and his nostrils flared; his gaze fell on the pair of thin black gloves which Jim had quite deliberately left lying on the corner of Dwight's desk.

Andy came out of the break room, the candy bar clenched in one fist, bright-eyed and breathing hard; in that moment, while the whole office turned to look at him out of mild curiosity, Dwight leaped up from his desk, seized Jim's gloves, and used them to slap Andy across the face.

There was a ringing silence, as Dwight stood with the gloves held high and his chest puffed out, and Andy's hands clenched very slowly into fists. The whole episode might have turned very ugly very quickly, but then Jim was on his feet, pushing his way in between the two nemeses and speaking in his best stadium-announcer voice. "Ladies and gentlemen, Dwight K. Schrute has issued a challenge to regain his honor! Andy Bernard, do you accept?"

"Hell yeah," Andy growled, curling his lip to bare his teeth; interested now, anticipating a piece of good theater or at least a break from boredom, the whole office broke out in whispers of approval.

"Good. And, of course, there is only one way to settle such a serious claim. These two gentlemen must battle it out in the oldest, most dignified game of war ever invented by man." His face was still grave; with the entire office watching him avidly, and Andy and Dwight glaring past him at each other, Jim turned around to the conference room door and called, "Pam? Is the battle arena prepared?"

Pam appeared in the doorway, her face lit up with a triumphant grin. "All ready," she confirmed, and beckoned the office workers into the conference room. They rose as one and shuffled after her, mildly curious, with Jim and the two combatants bringing up the rear.

The conference room had been completely transformed. The chairs had been pushed out of the center and lined up along the walls instead, leaving a wide clear space with the unmistakable look of a stage. At each end of the 'arena' was a pair of paper boxes around which had been fashioned a thick cable, apparently a spare extension cord. Lying beside each pair of boxes was a yardstick with a clump of cotton balls taped around the end.

Pam waited in the middle of the arena, between the paper boxes, while the rest of the office filed into their chairs; she caught Jim's eye as he shepherded Andy and Dwight, and they shared a lightning grin. He nodded at her, _Nice work_, and directed Dwight to the far end of the conference room to await the start of the game.

"Welcome to the time-honored game of flonkerton," Pam announced, from her referee position in the center of the room. "Some of you may have participated in this sport before, but as you can see the setup has been changed. Flonkerton racing is just for fun. Flonkerton jousting, which we will see today, is a sacred ritual used by the ancient Icelanders to settle disputes of honor between kings." She indicated the paper boxes on the floor. "Dwight, Andy, please don the ritualistic… footwear."

They obeyed without a thought, too busy fixing each other with venomous glares to make any objections. "Pick up your flonks," Pam instructed, and they leaned over to grip their yardsticks; Dwight held his like a javelin, while Andy clenched both hands around his as though intending to use it as a club.

"Here are the rules," Jim trumpeted, stepping up to stand beside Pam. "No weapons are permitted other than your flonks. No punching, clawing, or biting is allowed. No blows to the eyes, nothing below the belt, and nothing you wouldn't do to Darth Vader. Ready?" He took several steps back, pulling Pam with him to a place of safety. He raised his hand, restraining Andy and Dwight, who were both straining forwards against the extension cords around their feet. "Ready… begin!"

Dwight let out a bloodcurdling shriek, Andy bellowed like an enraged bull, and their yardsticks met with a mighty _thwack_ in the space between them. They lumbered forward, fencing furiously; Andy managed to jab Dwight's shoulder with the cotton-covered end of his yardstick, and yet out a yell of triumph as Dwight clutched the wounded area as though he had actually been stabbed. The office workers clapped and whistled, cheering on their favorites; Kevin and Creed were taking bets.

Jim and Pam leaned against the door of the conference room, watching the show. "I didn't know we condoned violence," Pam murmured; when Jim was satisfied that no one was looking at them, he put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close.

"We don't," he answered; but he sounded far too smug and self-satisfied as Dwight smacked Andy on the top of the head, getting revenge for the shoulder wound. "This is just… giving them a creative outlet for their anger. All's fair in love and flonkerton, Beesley."

"Really? So you won't mind if I do this?"

She moved swift as a striking snake, darting in to tickle him; her hands found the sensitive spot underneath his ribcage, and he was forced to squirm away, choking back laughter. She came after him again; he had to grab her hands in his own before she would stop, and just when he'd manage to wrap his fingers around hers, the door to the conference room slammed open and Michael appeared, striking what he obviously thought of an impressive pose, in the gap.

The office workers immediately grew quiet, swallowing their cheers and encouragement mid-word. Dwight and Andy, who were now pushing against each other with their yardsticks held like quarterstaffs, continued on obliviously until Michael started yelling.

"Hey hey hey!" he shouted, waving his arms frantically at the gladiators. "No fighting allowed unless you're fighting over me! Company policy! What are you doing, anyway?" he asked, casting a critical eye over the paper boxes and flonkerton equipment.

"Ancient Icelandic sport of kings," Pam called from her spot against the wall; she and Jim both had perfectly serious expressions, and Michael didn't seem to notice Kevin's snort of laughter or Stanley's aggrieved sigh.

"Oh, come on, don't be stupid. Everyone knows that they don't have kings in Iceland," Michael sighed, exasperated with Pam's ignorance. "They have emperor… penguins. You know, Emperor penguins? They're called that because they rule Iceland. You guys would know that if you weren't stupid." He sighed again, and made a shooing motion with his hands. "Okay, break it up, break it up. We've got major sales to make today! Besides, Darryl's going to teach me how to shoot a slam dunk in here, and I need all this crap cleaned up. Andy! Dwight! If you could make a basket of some kind… and a scoreboard… oh, and a disco ball! Can't forget that…"

Jim and Pam turned to each other at the same moment, with the same incredulous stare; they shared a wicked smile, and slipped silently out of the conference room, closing the door behind them as Michael put the rest of the office to work converting the flonkerton arena into a basketball court.

"Well, that killed twenty minutes," Jim sighed, checking his watch as he followed Pam into the empty break room. "Now it's back to drudgery. What are you doing?"

Pam had a styrofoam coffee cup in each hand, and was busy trying to puncture the bottoms with a plastic knife. "Nothing," she muttered, distracted. "You don't think Michael would keep any string in his office, do you? Or maybe in the supply cabinet…"

"I don't know," Jim told her, but his mind was churning. She was busy with her project, completely unsuspecting; distracted, off her guard. And what sort of prankster would Jim be if he didn't take advantage of that perfect circumstance?

Completely nonchalant, he took a few steps closer, meandering over as though to look in the refrigerator. He shuffled past her, peering over her shoulder – and struck, fingers flying to her navel, tickling her mercilessly. She shrieked, dropping the cups as her hands flew to his, trying to push him off, but he was too quick; in a moment he'd backed her up against the counter, trapping her with his arms as she squealed with laughter and tried her best to squirm away.

Then he leaned down and kissed her, and she was already pressing up onto her toes to meet his lips, not struggling anymore; she tasted like warmth and laughter, and they might have stayed like that for hours if they hadn't been interrupted by Kevin, who came into the break room looking for food to console himself over the loss of the flonkerton fight.

Jim and Pam broke apart, flushed and breathless, and did the best they could to feign small talk until he had left. When the door was firmly shut behind him, they gave up talking and just grinned at each other, burning smiles that put the sun outside to shame.

"What was that for?" Pam chided, wrapping her arms around herself as insurance against another unexpected tickle attack.

"I was just getting you back," Jim protested. "If you can sneak up on me, I can sneak up on you. All's fair, remember?"

"You know what this means, don't you?" Pam asked wickedly, her eyes glinting.

Jim matched her expression, a grin spreading slowly across his own face. "This means war," he answered. There was the seed of something in Pam's smile; and he knew that it was true. War had been declared. From now on, nothing and nowhere would be safe; she would sneaking up him whenever she could, to get him back for that last tickle fight, and then he would get his own revenge, and so on and so on until something better distracted them. This was war; they would spy on each other, sabotage and corner each other. Every kiss would be suspect, every embrace would be a battle. Every street corner would be a hiding place from behind which a snowball could be thrown.

They stared at each other for a moment, their smiles edged with cunning now, their eyes flickering, sizing each other up.

"Truce?" Jim asked, warily, and Pam nodded her agreement. Truce meant keeping hands out in the open; and keeping hands to yourself, as painful as that was. Truce was a white flag, under which Jim could turn his back on Pam without fear, long enough to walk over and open the door. He held it open, motioning for her to precede him out into the office proper. And then, as she walked past him with a challenge in her eyes, he feathered his fingers against the back of her neck, just enough to make her jump and turn around with a warning glare.

Because all was fair in love and war…

**

* * *

****Rule Four: All suspects are guilty until proven innocent**

The spring sunshine had mostly taken the chilling edge out of the air, but Jim and Pam well knew that it would still be cold on the roof of Dunder Mifflin after the sun went down. So when Pam caught his eye across the crowded conference room and motioned surreptitiously upward, he snuck out and vanished first into the storage room; when he finally reached the top of the ladder, five minutes later, it was with a blanket slung over his shoulder and a cardboard box clutched between his hands.

Pam, who was waiting for him on the pair of lawn chairs that now sat permanently near the roof's edge, raised her eyebrow in question; but he only smiled that mysterious smile and trotted over to join her, setting down his burden between them.

"Well, someone came prepared," she teased, peering over the edge of the cardboard box and ruffling through the various junk inside.

"Hey, once a Boy Scout, always a Boy Scout, Pam," Jim chortled, pulling open the plaid folds of the blanket. He kicked the box out of the way and pulled his lawn chair towards her until there was barely room between them; then he threw the blanket over Pam's shoulders and climbed in next to her, pulling the box up onto his legs and sorting through its contents.

"So, how did we do this year?" Pam asked, trying to tug the box away from him; he swatted at her hands, and finally resorted to the simple expedient of holding the box out of her reach as he finally pulled out what he had been looking for.

"No way, Beesley. Business later; pleasure first." As the expression on Pam's face clearly wondered at the kind of pleasure he had in mind, Jim let the fold of the blanket drop forward over his shoulder so that he could brush it dramatically aside, revealing a smaller cardboard box decorated in pink and yellow and green.

A broad grin lit up Pam's face, and she grabbed the smaller box from him, tearing at the top. "You got us Peeps?" she chuckled, sliding the first of the marshmallow chicks out of the wrapping. "Very classy, Jim. Very appropriate."

"I thought so," Jim agreed, peeling the head from her Peep and popping it into his mouth. He grinned flagrantly into her expression of outrage; she was speechless, her mouth gaping open, her hand tightening around the decapitated Peep so that the marshmallow stuffing leaked slowly out of its neck. Then, so fast he could barely comprehend it, her shock turned into that just-you-wait-I'll-get-you-back-for-this smile, and she threw the rest of the marshmallow chick at him, sticking her tongue out in triumph as it left a sticky pink stain on his shoulder and bounced away onto the concrete floor, where it was quickly forgotten.

Jim shook his head in resignation as Pam settled back in her chair, munching contentedly on the next Peep in the box. With her curious eyes scrutinizing his every move, he slowly reached under his own chair and drew out a pair of tall, thin glasses, quickly followed by a bottle of champagne.

This time the shock in Pam's eyes lasted less than a moment; in no time her crooked smile was back, and she accepted her glass with all the grace of a queen, raising it up so that the liquid inside glinted frosty and golden in the light of the stars. "A toast," she proposed, "to a day spent not working."

"And many more to come," Jim answered. The clink of their glasses echoed in the still-frozen air, and Jim let a few minutes of contented silence pass before he set his down on the roof beside his chair and pulled the last few items out of the large cardboard box; a notebook and a pair of pens. "Okay," he said gravely, passing one of the pens over to Pam and balancing the notebook between them. "Now, down to business. I counted a grand total of twenty pranks today." He drew the number in large print at the top of the first crisp page of the notebook. "What about you?"

Pam shook her head and leaned over him to cross out the zero and replace it with a one. "Remember Michael's whole end-of-the-world thing?" she asked, reproachfully. Jim nodded, but the expression on his face was doubtful.

"I don't know, Pam," he said slowly. "Are you sure that counts? I mean, I'd hardly call it a prank. A lame joke, maybe, at best. But not a prank – I mean, he didn't fool anyone. Not even Dwight."

"You know the rules, Jim," Pam replied sagely. "Any attempt to mess with one or more people in the office counts as a prank, even if it's a failed attempt. Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to count your little rubber bat in the ventilation duct that gave Meredith a panic attack but didn't fool anyone else."

"Hey! What makes you think that was me?" Jim protested. "That could have been anyone. I mean, Dwight was really into the whole bat thing. Maybe he did it."

"I know it was you, Jim," Pam sighed, and without looking at her Jim could hear in her voice that she was rolling her eyes. "I _know _you're the only one who can find the loose ceiling panel. Not to mention you're the only one tall enough to reach it with just a chair and not a ladder."

"Fine," Jim grumbled. "I admit it. So that's one for me." He scrawled his name on the left hand side of the paper, and under it scratched a tally mark; Pam wrote her name on the opposite side of the paper. Jim watched her out of the corner of his eye as she brought the pen back to her mouth, gnawing on it absently as she lost herself in her thoughts; the sight of her jogged his memory, and he poked her in the side to get her attention. "What about the exploding pen?" he asked.

Pam grinned at him, clearly delighted at the memory of Michael with blue ink streaked across his face. "That was me," she confirmed, and Jim added a tally mark underneath her name. It was her turn now; her eyes narrowed, and after a moment she came back with, "The lamp glued to the ceiling?"

"Me," Jim confirmed, earning a delighted giggle from Pam, who gave him another point. "I had to come in early, too. The things I do for this job… Okay, okay. Um… how about the jack-in-a-box in the microwave?"

"That was me," Pam bragged, and she and Jim were both forced to stop for a moment, savoring the look that had crossed Stanley's face; a fleeting hint of expression that had been enough to startle them into paroxysms of laughter.

"Okay, good. And I guess you were the gnome in the refrigerator, too?" Jim prompted, his pen hovering above the paper. He was stopped by Pam's shake of the head; surprised, he raised a questioning eyebrow.

"That wasn't me," she corrected him with a rueful smile. "That was actually Toby."

"You're kidding," Jim stated flatly; it wasn't a question. Pam shook her head.

"I swear to God," she answered seriously. "I saw him sneak it in under his coat this morning. I guess he was trying to get revenge for all the stuff Michael's done to him over the years. And he knows about Michael's deathly fear of gnomes, so…"

"Wow. I guess I knew he'd always snap someday." Jim shook his head, but awe and admiration filled his eyes. "Well, they say it's the quiet ones you have to watch out for, right? Man, I was so sure that was you. Michael stayed under his desk for half an hour!"

"I know," Pam giggled, but then regained control of herself and tapped the notebook. "Come on, Jimbo, back to business. That's five down, sixteen to go."

He gave her an odd glance at the use of the nickname, but shrugged and returned to the paper, adding a third column titled _Toby _with a single point. "Let's see," he muttered, ruminating. "Playing the train noises on the iPod was you… putting all the calendars back two days was you… convincing Dwight he was a werewolf was me… convincing Dwight _you _were a werewolf was me…"

"Hey!" Pam yelped, and hit Jim on the arm; he ignored her, too busy sorting through the day's madness and tallying up what mayhem he could remember.

"Convincing Michael that the toys on his desk were alive was a team effort… so we both get a point for that one." He paused. "What else?"

"Making Andy think he'd been accepted to American Idol," Pam reminded him; she had scooted closer to him and rested her head on his shoulder, the better to see the score sheet. "That was mine, thank you very much."

"Fine," Jim conceded, "A point for Pam, for warping Andy's already-delusional mind. I'd say about ten verbal pranks, jokes, and white lies; two each for you and me, then six for everyone else combined. Sound about right?" Pam nodded, her cheek rubbing against his shoulder, and he quickly rationed out the appropriate points. "And now, of course, there's the biggest one of all," he announced, peering down at the top of Pam's head; she glanced up to meet his gaze, her expression the very picture of innocence. "Who do you think it was," Jim asked slowly, "who covered my desk in a pile of pink paper hearts three feet deep, so that it took me twenty minutes to get them cleared away enough to work?"

Pam didn't so much as bat an eyelash. "Why, I haven't the slightest idea," she said airily, clasping her hands under her chin her very best sweet-little-Pammy routine. "Maybe it was Kelly? She's never really understood that Valentine's Day is over. And you know how much she loves pink."

"Oh, Kelly. Right. I should have thought of that. Except – I just have one question – why do you think Kelly would have written 'PB&J' on every single heart?" Jim was doing his best to look fiercely interrogative, but he had a sinking feeling that it wasn't working very well, not with Pam pouting at him and melting the more important bits of his brain.

"Maybe it was Kevin, then," she suggested. "You know how much he loves sandwiches. Maybe he was just… so overwhelmed by his love for sandwiches that he had to express it in some ridiculously romantic way."

"Oh, yes, I'm sure that's exactly what happened," Jim snorted, giving up on her and turning to doodle in the margins of the score sheet. "I'm sure Kevin was just dying for an opportunity to demonstrate his commitment to his three great loves – sandwiches, pranking, and me."

"Can you blame him?" Pam sighed contentedly, though still with a hint of a giggle in her voice. "I mean, I can definitely see where he's coming from. Sandwiches _are _pretty wonderful things." Jim nudged her in the ribs, and she added as an afterthought, "So are you, of course."

He looked down at her, and she peered up at him, and for a long moment their eyes met; and then they couldn't take it anymore, they both burst out into hysterical laughter, clinging to each other to keep from collapsing as they laughed like misbehaving children and gasped for breath.

When they could speak again, Jim managed to choke out, "You – are in _so _much trouble!"

"Innocent until proven guilty, Jim," Pam retorted; she had had more success at getting her breath back, and though she had managed to swallow her laughter she was still grinning a mile wide, her eyes bright with mirth and her cheeks flushed from the excitement and the cold.

"Oh, right," Jim panted, flashing his own dazzling white grin to match hers. "I forgot. Of course. Because there's no _proof _to show that you buried my desk in a pink paper avalanche. And you'd never do something that silly and frivolous, because you're a very professional receptionist who is just so dedicated to selling paper."

"Right," Pam agreed, inching closer to Jim, as they stared straight into each others' eyes and neither one backed down. "That's exactly it. Plus, you know, you're great and all, but I don't like you _that _much. I mean, I'd have to be crazy to do something that stupid just for _you_."

And then they were less than an inch apart, the steam from their breath mingling in the still-crisp end-of-winter night; and just before their lips touched, they murmured soft and low, in unison, "April Fools."

**

* * *

****Rule Five: There is no Rule Five, or The Law of Variation**

And the most important law was the law of variation.

Jim had learned that the hard way, but it was a lesson he held dear; that no matter how ordinary Pam looked, no matter how boring their life together appeared on the surface, well, you just never knew, did you?

Because she would eat Mixed Berry Yogurt every day for a year, and then one day he would playfully steal her lunch and the yogurt flavor would not be any kind of berry at all, but peach. And then the next day it would be strawberry, then green apple, then mixed berry again for six months, and so on; without pattern, without cease.

Because she said she hated horror movies, but he found Alfred Hitchcock on her shelves, and when he accused her of lying she had explained very patiently that those were _classics_, and it wasn't the same thing. Because she seemed like the kind of person who would be a fan of romantic comedies to the exclusion of all else, but when Jim let her pick the movie on date night she wanted to see _Beowulf_, despite the monsters and blood and gore.

Because she was a founding member of the Finer Things Club but still laughed when Jim played pranks like the most childish and immature of six-year-olds; because she went to art classes at the community college twice a week, but was still up for drawing in chalk on the sidewalk, and would probably try finger painting if she ever got the chance.

Because even after a year and then a year and a half together, there were still times when he didn't know exactly what she was thinking; because she had so many different smiles, one when she was shy and one when she was bold and one when she was lost in thought and on when she was just about to unveil a trick, a great big _gotcha _that would derail reality as Jim knew it and pull some huge rabbit-from-the-hat disappearing act that he didn't expect. Because she could still play pranks on _him_, the master of mayhem, the prankster king.

Because she would take frustration and abuse, take it for weeks and months and years, suffer silently and patiently and then explode with a temper more vicious and wounding than anyone had ever thought her capable of. Because she cried during documentaries when baby animals died, and then teased Jim mercilessly when he his eyes watered because he had gotten dust in them and he tried to surreptitiously wipe it away. Because she was dependable, but still full of little inconsistencies that sometimes made Jim feel like that by going out with her he was exploring an unfamiliar country, a far off fairyland where surprises waited around every bend and the maps said only _here be dragons._

Because Pam looked average enough, and from the outside their romance and their lives were as predictable as any dime-a-dozen TV show and movie plot, but things were never as they seemed; it was because of all these things that Jim had added to the rules of their relationship, _expect the unexpected_.

For example: Pam had art classes every Tuesday and Thursday night. So on the dreary and rain-drenched third Tuesday of September, Jim expected the apartment he and Pam shared to be empty; he drove home slowly, made half a dozen stops, because he thought that only darkness and dust were waiting for him, and he could let them wait. He loaded up the trunk of his car with things that were to be kept secret at all costs, because he didn't expect there to be anyone at home to see him unload them.

But, of course, his luck and his fiancée conspired against him and when he pulled into the parking lot of their apartment building, the sight of Pam's car filled him with a very real, icy, knife-edged panic.

It took several minutes of gripping the steering wheel with white-knuckled hands and staring at the dashboard as though hoping to burn through it with only the venom of his glare before he was able to get himself under control again. He took several deep breaths, climbed out of the car, and clenched his hands into fists to keep them from shaking; then, with one last desperate glance at his trunk, he slowly and deliberately walked into the building, entered the elevator, and jabbed the appropriate button with a finger that hardly trembled at all.

Usually Jim and Pam ate leftovers, sandwiches, or pizza during the week; elaborate meals were for the weekends, when they took turns cooking and making fun of each others' cooking, or else they went out for real dates, which could consist of anything from dinner at a fancy French restaurant to a night at the nearest amusement park. So he was surprised when the warm smells of something roasting spilled out around him when he opened the apartment door; not only because Pam was cooking, but because she had apparently managed to use the oven without setting fire to anything vital. He only had a moment to wonder if she had set fire to herself instead, but then she appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, wearing an inexpertly tied apron, a foot-tall chef's hat cocked at a jaunty angle, and a brilliant grin.

"Wow." He was stunned speechless for a moment, and could only look up her and down, smiling his approval. "Nice outfit, Beesley. Maybe you should give up selling paper and get your own TV show instead. I know plenty of people would pay for the privilege of seeing you in that hat."

"Oh, shut up, Halpert," she said happily, darting forward and pulling him into the apartment so fast that he barely had time to shut the door behind him; then, as he turned back to ask her what the hell she was doing, she caught him off guard with a well-timed kiss. He snatched the hat off her head with one hand, to get it out of the way; with the other hand he caught her around the waist and pulled her closer, deepening the kiss, and it took all of her strength to squirm away. "Focus," she told him, the mirthful glint in her eyes belying her firm tone of voice. "We're celebrating tonight." She pointed over her shoulder, to the kitchen, from which enticing smells were still drifting, and her message was clear; they would be celebrating a _different _way from the one Jim had in mind.

He followed her back into the kitchen, twisting the white fabric of her hat between his large hands. "Okay," he said dismissively, shrugging away her rebuke. "But _what_ are we celebrating? Your birthday isn't until next week, and mine's in three months. Not that I don't love celebrating," he added quickly, as she returned to the complicated things she was doing with the oven, pausing only to point to the occasional piece of cutlery which he quickly fetched for her.

"I'm graduating next week," she informed him, her grin growing a little wider with the words. "First in my class. That's why the teacher let us off early tonight; he said we'd all earned a break, especially me."

"Seriously? Wow, Pam, I'm really proud of you." He pulled the plates from her hand and spun her around for a congratulatory kiss; this time she was the one who had to be gently pushed away, though they were both beaming. "That _is_ a cause for celebration," Jim announced, retreating across the kitchen to pull out a bottle of wine.

"And after the graduation ceremony, my teacher's rented space at an art gallery downtown to show the student's best pieces," Pam continued. "He said that I'll probably sell everything I show. Can you imagine?"

He almost couldn't. He didn't know how much art went for these days, but they could put the extra money towards planning their wedding… and he suddenly realized that this was only the beginning, that Pam would probably go to more art shows, maybe even become famous. The very thought made his heart swell with pride; and they could put the money towards planning their wedding next spring, and after that…

After that his mind reverted without his consent to the insane, impossible package sitting in the trunk of his car. And amidst all of his pride for Pam, all of the warm currents of love and affection and appreciation, he felt a small pinprick of ice in the pit of his stomach, a marble of lead that weighed heavily on his soul. Because the art shows, and the wedding, and the thing in the trunk of his car… when he put them all together in his mind, he knew with an irrevocable certainty that nothing in his life would ever be the same again.

"Jim?"

Pam's voice was quiet and concerned, a far cry from the golden exaltation it had been only a minute before. Jim realized that he had stopped in the middle of the kitchen and was staring blankly at the wall, with one hand holding the wine bottle and the other hanging limp at his side. He shook his head to clear it and summoned a smile again, as a defense against Pam's eyes, which had suddenly turned piercing.

"I'm really proud of you," he said again, and it was true, but it was a weak defense. Jim, who had been working as a salesman in a dead-end job selling paper for seven years, was suddenly beset on all sides by changes; and yogurt flavors be damned, these were big changes, real life-altering changes. And Jim, who had always sort of drifted along wherever life saw fit to take him, was suddenly not quite sure what to think.

Then Pam was holding both his hands in hers, and looking up at him with the love in her eyes suddenly turned fierce, turned strong. "What's wrong?" she demanded, somehow managing to be suspicious and compassionate all at once; slowly, without speaking, Jim reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded-up sheet of paper. He handed it to her wordlessly, and she let go of one of his hands long enough to take it.

A moment passed in silence as she scanned the close, typewritten words and the columns of figures that filled the paper and even spilled out into the margins. When she glanced up again she was dazed, glassy-eyed, and looking just as secretly terrified as Jim felt. Slowly, carefully, she walked over and set the paper down on the kitchen table, smoothing the creases away with her fingers as though the sheet of paper was in fact made of engraved glass.

"Jim," she said carefully, "This is the deed to a house. And it's for us." She looked up at him, still in awe. "Where did you get this? What's going on?"

"It was supposed to be a wedding present from my parents," he sighed. "They made the down payment – they didn't buy the whole thing. But I didn't want to wait for our wedding, so I was going to give it to you for your birthday, next week." He walked over to join her next to the table and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into an embrace. "And then, just now, I was thinking – your art career is taking off, you'll probably become world famous, and we'll get married in May, and it just hit me; it won't be the same, will it?" He was overawed, unsure. "From now on, I mean. Pretty soon nothing will be the same, ever again. And I'm not just talking yogurt flavors and movie genres anymore…"

"What?" She looked up at him, puzzled, but then her bewilderment cleared and she smiled at him, which was always reassurance enough to drive any trepidation from this thoughts. "Of course things won't be the same," she chided him. "Things will be really different – things are _always_ changing, _always_ different. But _we'll _be the same." She kissed him again, soft and chaste, just pressing her lips to his. "And even if we change, us being together won't change. The fact that I love you won't change." And she kissed him again, kissed him for endless minutes until the smell of something burning filled the kitchen and they had to break apart, Jim running for the fire extinguisher while Pam opened the oven door and got out of the way.

And as they laughed and talked about the future over pizza, Jim reminded himself of his own rule; _expect the unexpected_. The law of unexpected turnabout and sudden, constant variation; it was a law of life and their relationship, right up there with gravity and buying roses on Valentine's Day. And, after he had brought up the house paperwork from the trunk of his car, he and Pam watched _The Princess Bride _and feigned swordfighting with pillows and kissed in all the romantic places.

(Because some things, at least, never change.)

* * *

(Do you think I should split this chapter up into five smaller ones? It would make rather a mess of the prompt scheme, but it's something that I toyed with, briefly. What do you think? And, of course, what do you think of the chapter in general?

A hearfelt plea, from me to you;

Gentle reader, please review!


	3. matter and antimatter roses

**Title: **Jam fluff

**Series:** The Office

**Theme No.:** 4; to cut a bouquet of matter and antimatter roses

**Pairing: **Jim/Pam

**Rating: **PG-13

**Notes: **Here's a short chapter, to offset yesterday's long one; and some angst, to offset yesterday's shameless fluff. Don't worry, there's copious amounts of fluff still to come. This story takes place sometime during Season 2.

* * *

The roses had been a moment of folly, of weakness. The florist was next door to the little café where Jim usually stopped to get his morning coffee (the office stuff was intolerable). And, after all, it was the second week in February, and the candy in the window display had lured him inside and by the time he'd known what he was doing, it was too late.

He drove to work ten miles over the speed limit, hasty and furtive, like he was trying to get away with something (or away _from _something). The bundle of flowers burned a hole in the passenger seat, and he could barely stand the fifteen-minute ride; he imagined that he could feel every thorn, every crinkle of the enveloping plastic, digging into his skin.

When he reached Dunder Mifflin, he paused in his car long enough to shove the incriminating evidence into his bag so that no one would see it as he hurried across the parking lot. He could have left it in the car; but, as he later pleaded, it was the second week of February, and if that wasn't enough to induce temporary insanity he didn't know what was.

Buying the roses had been a moment of weakness. Leaving them behind her desk had been pure impudence, arrogance, lovesick desperation; because she was engaged to be married to another man, because he had no _right _to be leaving her roses, especially not during the second week of February.

Because giving a girl roses was supposed to be a token of love; love that Jim was not allowed to have, and love he was certainly not allowed to express. So he told himself that the roses he left behind Pam's desk were a token of anti-love; his complete and utter lack of the romantic love that he was not allowed to feel for her. They were a parody of sorts, showing that even the most platonic of friends could leave roses for his platonic friend during the second week of February.

And when her face lit up with joy and surprise, he was able to tell himself that he felt nothing, or even less than nothing. When she gave credit for the roses to Roy, who looked confused for a moment but then nodded and grinned and leaned in to kiss her, Jim was almost able to ignore it completely.

Dwight, sitting across from Jim at his desk, made a slight disgruntled growling noise. Desperate for distraction, Jim looked up at him with a raised eyebrow, prompting an explanation.

"When I am the unquestioned sovereign emperor of the world, all Valentine's Day tokens shall be made out of antimatter," Dwight announced, without looking up from his computer screen. "Anyone who behaves so foolishly about such a shameful, sentimental display of weakness deserves to have their molecules neutralized."

"Wow." Jim leaned back in his chair, still resolutely not looking at Pam.

Antimatter. For a moment the image was irresistible; roses black as pitch, roses made of death and anti-life, that caused devastating destruction where they touched…

Pam giggled at something Roy said, and before Jim had a chance to think he was turning around to look at her, starting to smile in instinctive response to her laughter. The smile died as he caught sight of her, pressed up against Roy in a sudden embrace, the bouquet of roses crushed between them.

His face completely expressionless, Jim turned back to his desk, back to Dwight. "You know," he said tonelessly, "maybe you've got something there."

* * *

Thanks to all my lovely, talented, discerning reviewers; please take this opportunity to become one of them by telling me what you think. 


	4. let x equal

**Title: **Jam fluff

**Series: **The Office

**Theme No.: **2. let x be the value of he who lies beside me

**Pairing: **Jim/Pam

**Rating: **PG

**Notes: **Let it be known that I know next to nothing about art, and even less about math; any equations and principles I make up for this story are solely that, made up, and more symbolic than real. I also can't claim to know how an artist's-blocked artist feels, but I am very well acquainted with the demons of writer's block, and I imagine that in both cases the blank white paper holds a similar terror. This story actually came about as a way of breaking writer's block induced by the utter fatigue of NaNo WriMo (of which I'm now a winner!)... but I digress. Enjoy the story, and do review!

* * *

The paper was white; that was about all that could be said for it. White eight-by-eleven printer paper, not the premium high-priced Dunder Mifflin stock, but not the watermark-stained recycled stuff either. It had come originally from some unfortunate tree, and had just that afternoon been stolen from the supply closet of the Dunder Mifflin offices of Scranton, Pennsylvania. And that was about it.

Pam stopped contemplating the paper long enough to wonder, vaguely, why she no longer felt bad about stealing from Dunder Mifflin. Jim's influence, no doubt; he had a way of making things like that not matter so much. Not that he was encouraging her to criminal acts -- far from it. It was just that he knew when a thing was stupid and silly, and he said so, and then suddenly Pam realized that she'd been feeling bad over nothing, and all the complicated things just straightened themselves out and turned out all right in the end…

With a concentrated effort, Pam wrenched her thoughts away from Jim and back to the paper. The blank white paper; she'd been sure to get the kind without the Dunder Mifflin logo on the top. The blank white paper on the blank white tabletop in the blank white current of a cloudy Saturday afternoon. Slowly, Pam tapped her pencil one, twice, against the ring on her other hand. It made a satisfactory clinking sound, and it cost Pam a great deal to not tap out the rhythm to "Jingle Bells". She had to focus. She had to _think._

She sat at the kitchen table in the blank, neat, clean white apartment she shared with Jim; she stared miserably into the blank paper that yawned like the endless void inside her brain. She had work to do; she had an assignment; she had a due date. She needed to think, but thoughts were elusive today, flitting away from her conscious grasp and retreating into the hazy distance of doubts and dreams. Not even Algebra homework in the seventh grade had been this bad. And the paper stretched on and on and on…

She knew what Jim would say. Jim would walk in and stand behind her, peering over her shoulder at the empty page and studying it like he would study a masterpiece; then he would announce that her work was brilliant and she'd clearly done enough for one day, and he would kiss her or tickle her or find some other way to tease and drive her to distraction. And when she gathered her wits enough to confront him about it, he'd say that inspiration couldn't be rushed, she wasn't getting anything done just sitting there, and if she had an idea she should go after it but in the meantime, couldn't they find some more pleasant thing to do? And if she insisted he'd let her go, but it would be reluctant and he'd hang around for the rest of the day, drifting in and out of the room, trying to be helpful and ending up being nothing much more than a distraction; a pleasant distraction, yes, and one that she didn't want to go away, but a distraction nonetheless..

Pam shook herself out of her daydreaming with a guilty start, slightly surprised at how vivid and lifelike her own thoughts had been. For a moment she'd sworn she could almost feel Jim's big, soft hands on her shoulders, hear his voice whispering in her ear; but Jim was out for the day, driving down to Maryland to take his brother out to lunch. It was a semiannual thing they had, Jim and his brother, and he'd asked Pam to come along but she had turned him down, saying she didn't want to interfere with his 'manly bonding' (air quotes included) and besides, she had work to do…

Work. She had work to do. An art project, due Monday; a study of depth. She should have been drawing deep things, shadowed things, and instead she sat staring at a blank paper daydreaming of Jim. Gathering all her determination, she shook her head to clear it and started looking for depth-shadows and extra dimensions lurking in the corners of the kitchen. It was an ordinary kitchen, with nothing more interesting than flat surfaces, wood and tile and chrome; the most accentuated thing was the toaster, and there was no way Pam was going to draw the toaster. She had had enough of her flowerpot-and-stapler days, her mundane object watercolors and self-pity. She had moved beyond that now; she was ready for self-confidence, for real art.

But before she got to the level of real art, she had a project due Monday. It was three o'clock on Saturday afternoon, and the minutes kept on flickering past, a waterfall of rubies on the red digital kitchen clock.

The woman who taught the art classes at the Scranton community college had a voice like pins and needles; her voice came back to Pam now, drifting like a thread of cloud out of the blankness of her brain. "_Depth is a mathematical construct formed by the different angles of light entering the eyes_." Nothing met Pam's eyes but chrome and tile, tile and chrome, and dirty dishes in the sink from breakfast, which she'd eaten with Jim before he left. She thought haphazardly about doing the dishes, but the will to work had left her, and suddenly it was as hard to move as it was to think. She was tired; she was uninspired; and a lesser artist would have given up, but Jim would say that she should go after her dreams, she should pursue the things she loved.

The art teacher's voice came again, crisp and cold like the paper which resisted being filled. "_There is an equation to calculate the components of depth; if we let x equal the length of the subject, and y its distance from the perspective point…_"

It echoed loudly and painfully in Pam's skull, like the beginning of a headache after too little sleep. "_Let x equal the length…_"

She had signed up for the class because she had gone as far as she could with documentaries on the Discovery Channel and books she took out of Scranton's meager library, and she was ready for real art, she was ready for the things that only another artist could teach her. Of course, she knew that it wasn't an exact science, or even an inexact one; she knew that there was no secret, no 'trick', but somehow she could never shake the hope that she might gain some valuable knowledge, some little piece of the nature of art that she hadn't had before, and then the lines and loops and shades would just spill from her fingers, overflow from her hands.

So was this the secret, the right way to draw and paint? Was this some little piece of information that she'd missed, back when she'd first decided what _art_ was supposed to be and how you were supposed to get there? Had she left this vital equation of her calculations? The teacher's voice was like a guillotine, irrevocable. "_Let x equal_…" Pam had never liked math very much.

She leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes, covering her face with her hands, almost ready to surrender to despair. She couldn't come up with a single image, a single detail worthy of putting pencil to paper; her sketch would languish and die, she'd never finish the project, her world was doomed to an eternity of being depthless, two-dimensional and flat. If art was what the teacher and the community college had assigned, then Pam was doomed to fail at it, to fail like she had almost failed Trigonometry in the tenth grade. X was just another letter to her, good for playing Scrabble but not much else.

Her thoughts wandered from the impossible task before her, and as soon as she stopped thinking about art she started thinking about Jim, because when she wasn't actively concentrating on something else she always reverted to thinking about Jim. And suddenly she imagined he was still there with her, in the kitchen, being conspicuously unobtrusive; whistling softly and tuning himself like a malicious radio, sometimes humming the songs he knew she loved, sometimes picking songs that he knew got stuck in her head for days and days. In her bright-as-day imagination, Jim was moving around with his lazy shambling gait, cleaning up where he could, mostly just confusing the clutter; he was channel surfing, and talking animatedly about their future, and kissing her soft and slow. The lines on his hands caught her imagination, the faint calluses on his fingertips from a lifetime of typing and not much else; the naturally artful, fantastically messy layers of his hair, the dip in his shoulders when he was disappointed or sad, the curve between his neck and his shoulder that she could see from her desk at work, when he sat with his back half-turned and his profile lit up from underneath by his computer screen…

Ten minutes had passed before Pam realized that her hand was moving.

She stopped, surprised, and looked down at her paper, where the fuzzy lines and half-sketched curves were already beginning to take on tantalizing shape. She hurriedly finished the drawing; the shading in exactly the right places, the contrast of dark and light, the faint marks to indicate where colors would blend into each other, when she eventually brought color to the endless white. The depthless void of the devouring white paper had become a different kind of depth, one with dimension and direction. And before she could think too much about it, before the equations came back to rattle alarmingly in her empty brain like the bones of her decaying inspiration, she rushed to get the thing finished, to get it down.

The sketch was one of Jim, as she'd found him when she had woken up that morning; stretched across their bed, his lanky limbs tangled in the covers, with light and shadow playing across his peaceful face. The version on Pam's paper was only a sketch, but already she could see what it would eventually become, once depth and color had been properly added and the little inconsistencies had been straightened out…

"_Let x equal the length of the subject, and y equal its distance from the perspective point._" Now the teacher's voice was faint and ghostly, an angry wail in the distance. Pam glanced at the clock, surprised to find how much time had passed, and wondered how she would explain on Monday that x could have no other value than that of the man she loved.

She was saved from these contemplations by the rattle of a key in the front door lock. Still dazed from the sudden burst of – was it inspiration? – she could only sit still, listening, as the hinges swung open and the shiny, leather-soled footsteps made their way to stand just behind her, and Jim was peering over her shoulder as he would at a masterpiece fit for a museum.

"Wow," he said quietly, and his breath on her neck made her shiver. "Am I really that handsome?" There was a laugh in his voice, and his hand came to rest on her shoulder, squeezing it gently.

"Well, I did have to exaggerate some things a bit," Pam answered, and they both chuckled. Then she was standing up and Jim was kissing her without warning, by way of greeting; she returned the kiss, standing on the tips of her toes, and she thought of depth as the distance between them, as the vast spaces in his lips and his eyes that were so easy to get lost in.

(On Monday, Pam's project got an A.)

* * *

Remember the magic word: Review! 


	5. scenes from the narcissist cafe

**Title: **Jam fluff

**Series:** The Office

**Theme No.:** 41; scenes from the Narcissist Café

**Pairing: **Jim/Pam

**Rating: **PG-13

**Notes: **This, like so many other of these ficlets, is an experiment; a step in a new direction. Both the format and the feel I was going for were inspired by Neil Gaiman, who should be exalted. I don't really know how well the vibes I'm playing with work; so it's up to you to tell me.

This will be weird. I won't deny it. But hopefully it's weird in a good way, and not a bad one. Thanks for reading, either way!

* * *

**i. coffee**

Jim liked sitting over coffee in the break room when they were supposed to be working. He never worked anyway, and sitting in the break room was better than sitting at his desk, because when he was at his desk he was supposed to look at his computer and then he couldn't see her face.

He had learned to read all the delicate subtleties of her facial expressions years ago; he could have written a book, a dictionary for every curl of her lip, every glint in her eye. Now he was learning to read his own expressions mirrored back in hers. She smiled when he smiled, she growled when he smirked, and when he scowled she got quiet and still. When he let some unexpected emotion slip into his eyes, he could tell by the tensing of her shoulders.

(They mirrored each other, like perfect symmetry, like two halves of the same soul.)

They spent hours in the break room over coffee. Jim spent hours looking into Pam's eyes and smiling at her smiles, drowning in reflections of himself.

* * *

**ii. wine**

Pam couldn't help it; sometimes she pitied the people she saw on the street, the businesswomen bustling around in what she would forever think of as Karen's suits, and the obviously single younger girls and even the people like Angela and Meredith. She pitied them because they didn't have a Jim to go home to.

She wasn't snobbish by nature. But years of Roy and mediocrity had made her humble, and sometimes she liked to exercise her new backbone, the new confidence she'd learned from Jim. She tested it like she would test-drive a new car, because superiority was an intoxicant that she hadn't tasted since the second place spelling bee trophy in sixth grade.

She didn't gloat, but she couldn't help noticing all the relationships around her falling apart while hers stayed intact; and that feeling, of finally being the lucky one, went to her head and made her grin like a lunatic. But, of course, she never was drunk enough to say anything out loud.

* * *

**iii. water**

"Wow. Are you sure it's not a hurricane or something?" Jim muttered, peering out the window at the curtains of rain as thick as night.

"We're in Pennsylvania," Pam snorted. "Coward."

They stood just inside the doors of the office building; Jim held his umbrella against his shoulder like a soldier at parade rest. Thunder rumbled ominously in the distance, but the rain drumming on the glass and the concrete and the asphalt almost drowned it out. The gutters were brimming over, the parking lot was one big puddle, and Pam knew from Jim's face that he was worrying that their basement had flooded already.

"Come on!" she cried suddenly, impulsive and impatient. She snatched the umbrella from Jim and snapped it open, dancing out into the storm. He gave chase, yelling about how selfish and unfair she was, as he got thoroughly drenched in a matter of seconds.

Pam ran on ahead, clutching the umbrella, laughing. Let him get wet, soaked through to the bone; curling up beside the fire tonight would be worth it, and besides, kissing the raindrops off his lips always left her thirsty for more.

* * *

**iv. starvation**

_If you were stranded on a desert island, what would you bring?_

Because it was Michael who had asked, Jim was tempted to break the rules; to answer logically, sensibly. To bring food, or water, or a helicopter, just because it would piss Michael off and break the "friendship circle".

Then he looked across the conference room, pondering, and his eyes were caught up on a glint of brown; the light in Pam's eyes, as she bit back laughter. Anticipating his response, and Michael's reaction.

Jim thought of that desert island, bare of life and love, without even a coconut to eat. And he said, "I would bring Pam." She blushed and giggled and Michael said something inappropriately suggestive.

To hell with logic and survival, Jim thought. He would drag Pam with him to his desert island prison; just Pam, nothing and no one else. _To hell with coconuts and helicopters. Let us both starve._

* * *

**v. longing**

A stolen kiss, a just-missed glance.

The clock chimes noon and all is well.

Eyes meet; away; a silent dance.

Five hours to go; they are in hell.

* * *

**vi. flowers**

The sign said 'Please Keep Off the Grass'. The turf around it was pockmarked with footprints that sunk into the tender blades like craters, and the rosebushes that lined the cobblestone path sported a few decapitated stalks.

Jim wiped the sap from his fingers and clutched his newly-plucked flowers carefully; mindful of their thorns. May had burst upon the world in full bloom, and a little sign was hardly going to keep him from bringing roses to the love of his life.

Besides, their love was above such earthly things.

* * *

**vii. illusion**

The illusion of their love was a many-layered thing.

Jim admired the man Pam thought he was; the secure, intelligent man, the one who could laugh and always knew the perfect prank to pull, who always managed to be sweet and strong at the same time.

Pam loved the woman Jim said she was; beautiful and wonderful and deserving of so much more than what life had given her.

Pam discovered that sometimes talking to Jim was like looking at herself through dark glass (she could never quite believe his compliments). And Jim found that dating Pam was like living in a fairy tale (the script of white knight was already written; he only had to read the lines).

And maybe one day they would turn around and realize that Pam really was that woman, and Jim really was that man, and then everything would work out happily for ever and ever.

After all, that strategy had worked for them before.

* * *

**viii. tower**

Jim had seen the Disney movies. He knew how the perfect romance was supposed to go; he knew that the path to the princess was often fraught with peril.

Some knights were stopped by the dark stinging-nettle forest (but he had broken up with Karen, despite her tears like thorns in his heart).

Some princes were stopped by the dragon that guarded the castle, ever watchful (but Roy was gone now, out of her life, out of the picture for good).

And then, on the night of their first date, there was only the ivory tower itself; the final obstacle, built of all the little lies and tricks and infidelities they'd used over the years to keep themselves locked in and the other one locked out (and sometimes the other way around).

A lesser white knight might have given up, with all the tension and secrets between them and the fancy restaurant and her eyes in the candlelight. The tower's walls were nigh insurmountable. But Jim had come too far, had too much pride to allow himself to be turned away.

"So, tell me again why you gave up the Corporate job?"

He took a deep breath, and began to climb.

* * *

**ix. echo**

They hadn't come full circle. Their love was more like a spiral or a kaleidoscope; infinite, imperfect circles that never quite brought you back to where you'd been before.

They had learned that love was far from selfless; on the contrary. There was more self, _your_self and _her_self, _him_self and yours, both trying to be the same self; and neither would surrender without a fight.

No one ever believed that they had fights, but they did. And when the fights were over, they always ended up at Cugino's, at the same table in the back, to talk it over and make up. The place had seen so many reunions that echoes of devotion compressed the very air, made colors softer and words more bearable.

When one or both of them was acting selfishly, they always spiraled back here, to the echoes of their first date; falling in love all over again after every petty grievance and act of vanity, every fight.

Because no matter how bad things go, they were both too in love and too addicted and too selfish to stay away for long.

* * *

Remember; I am unsure, insecure, and wondering if I should pack up and leave town. Please, I beg of you, review!

(I'm really, really nervous about this one, guys. Help me out a little? Please?)


	6. potentiality knocks on my heart

**Title: **Jam fluff

**Series:** The Office

**Theme No.: **22; potentiality knocks on the door of my heart

**Pairing: **Jim/Pam

**Rating: **PG-13

**Notes: **This is based on the song "Let's Get Married" by Archie Star, which has been rattling around in my head for days and days. I'm hoping that it will finally leave me alone if I give it a story; so here it is, more sugar-overload fluff for your reading pleasure. Thanks to all my reviewers, past and future. Enjoy!

* * *

The knock on the door came at precisely nine o'clock, three quick raps followed by two slow. Jim made a very great show of not immediately getting up to answer it; he continued watching TV until the end of the commercial, and when he finally heaved himself off the couch he only wandered generally doorwards, checking the popcorn in the microwave, riffling through the stack of DVDs that sat on the kitchen table. After several minutes and another, much shorter and angrier knock, Jim finally threw the door open, rearranging his face into a mask of surprise.

"Hey," he said, eyes wide. "What are you doing here? I think it's past your bedtime."

"And on a school night, too," Pam answered, grinning up at him. "I'm just awful. Now, aren't you going to invite me in?"

"So bossy," Jim exclaimed, moving aside to let his girlfriend squeeze past him into the apartment. "Anything else you'd like me to do, your Majesty?"

"You could get my bag," Pam called, already busy clanking away in the kitchen.

Jim heaved a theatrical and much put-upon sigh; but he grabbed the duffel bag Pam had left in the hall, and retreated into the kitchen, shutting the door behind him. "Are you ready for the grand tour?" he asked, smiling as Pam stared around his apartment with a quizzical air. It wasn't the way she'd left it; it was a good deal cleaner, for one thing, and Jim had done what appeared to be a sort of schizophrenic feng shui with the living room furniture.

Jim took Pam's raised eyebrow as an affirmative. "Okay, then," he began, gesturing at the kitchen table. "If you look to your left, you will notice the bag of marshmallows, which are absolutely essential… we have quite a wide selection of DVDs for your viewing pleasure this evening, and popcorn. And to your right, we have the finest blanket fort materials known to man."

"Nice," Pam laughed, picking up a pillow from the floor and weighing it one hand experimentally before tossing it away. "And when we're done being twelve, then what are we going to do?"

"Please," Jim snorted. "This is _nothing _like being twelve." Suddenly he was standing beside her, with one arm around her waist, pulling her in against him so that the whole world filled with his warmth and his voice shivering through her bones. "This," he continued, "is a _science_. The lifelong quest to produce the perfect sleepover."

Then, while she was too busy stifling giggles to be at all on guard, he leaned in and kissed her. She returned the kiss immediately, pressing up onto her tiptoes, and before they knew what was happening her hands were tangled in his collar and his were on the small of her back, and there was absolutely nothing twelve-year-old about it.

When they finally broke apart, they were both breathing hard, both grinning like lunatics (a year of dating had not been enough to dull the adrenaline rush, like a burst of lightning to the brain, in every kiss). It was with much reluctance, and the promise of many more un-twelve-year-old things to come, that Pam grabbed her bag and retreated to the bathroom to shower and change.

Jim shook his head to clear it, and set about clearing off the living room floor, sorting the pillows by size and shape for later use. By the time Pam came back, he had slotted the latest Harry Potter movie into the DVD player, and was happily immersed in Hogwarts; but not so immersed that he didn't look up when his girlfriend showed up in the doorway and quickly, quietly turned off all the lights.

* * *

They made it through Harry Potter without incident, which Jim thought was a prodigious feat; they even managed to sit in opposite ends of the blanket fort for the first three-quarters of the movie. But then, as midnight rolled around and Pam insisted on _The Princess Bride_ as the second part of their double feature, Jim found that somehow without his noticing they had ended up curled up together, with her head resting on his chest and his arms around her waist.

The credits of Harry Potter ended, but Jim found himself disinclined to get up, let alone turn the lights on and fiddle with the TV. He was infinitely comfortable just as he was; from the way Pam was not moving off his lap, he guessed she was, too.

He sighed contentedly as the DVD started to play over again. "You should get your apartment painted more often," he murmured, inhaling the scent of her shampoo; the sharp tang of fresh paint still clung to her, even after her shower.

"I think I should," she replied, sleepily. "Having sleepovers is fun." There was no sarcasm this time; just pure, unadulterated happiness, the same sort of slow golden feeling that Jim was having so much trouble fighting off.

"Yeah," he said quietly. Suddenly something like sunrise happened inside his head; he realized that right here, right now, was an absolutely perfect moment, with the world dark and quiet all around him and the love of his life falling asleep in his arms. He realized that he probably could not ask for anything more than to have this feeling again, to have it as often as he could for the rest of his life; to have boundless opportunities to stay up all night with Pam in his arms. The world was silly and meaningless, when Pam knocked on his door; anything was possible, potential was unbounded when he could feel her heart beating in time with his.

"I should sleep over here all the time," Pam continued, her voice growing drowsier with every word. "Then you could come and sleep over at my place…"

There was a moment of absolute silence, which was broken when Jim said exactly what he was thinking, and all he consequences and potential came later; "We should just move in together."

"Fine," Pam murmured, "but we're going to move into my apartment, because I just got it painted, and yours is too small anyway."

"Okay," he affirmed, and realized with a jolt that they had just made a major decision in their relationship, pretty much by accident, under the influence of Harry Potter and _The Princess Bride _and too much popcorn and one o'clock in the morning. And he wouldn't have had it any other way.

There was another moment of silence, as Jim's brain tumbled over itself and got tangled in possible futures. "We could get married," he said.

"In the morning," Pam yawned, and then her breathing slowed and she was asleep; holding his breath for fear of waking her, Jim carefully slipped out from behind her, and quickly switched the movies in the DVD player before settling back against the couch and, despite his best efforts, starting to drift off himself.

"We could get married," he said again, because he liked the sound and the taste of it on his tongue. "We could." Together, they could do anything. They could get married; they could learn to fly. All it would take was a joke, a sly sarcastic quip, that certain mischievous glance which meant something pranksterish was afoot; sleep-dazed, he realized that the golden feeling of being-in-love was everywhere, if he looked for it. So much possibility, so much potentiality in every glance…

Slowly, he fell asleep; and on the TV screen, Westley and Buttercup found and lost true love, over and over again, until morning.

* * *

I've noticed a sort of pattern in my fics; I tend to alternate stories like this, which I tend to think of as Good Old-Fashioned Happy Fluff, with more serious or differently-structured stories...

You've all been so inspiring in the past; don't stop now! I beg you, bolster my failing imagination with your thoughtful reviews!


	7. bitterness doesn't stand a chance

**Title: **Jam fluff

**Series:** The Office

**Theme No.:** 47; Bitterness doesn't stand a chance with those two

**Pairing: **Jim/Pam

**Rating: **PG-13

**Notes: **I've been rather interested in Oscar's character lately; he seems to be the only other genuinely normal person in the office, and I've been itching to tell some kind of story from his perspective. So here it is; a little glimpse into the woes of Oscar's life, though of course we can't let a chapter go by without some mischief from Jim and Pam, now can we?

Also, here is an example of backsliding to the sinfully run-on sentences of my youth. I must ask your forgiveness for that.  Enjoy the story.

* * *

Oscar did not keep romance novels under his desk. Yes, he was gay, and because of that Michael now made a point of asking him about his boyfriends every now and then, but he was not quite so far gone -- not quite so garish -- as to flaunt his failing love life in the place where he worked. He took comfort in the fact that he wasn't yet pathetic enough to wallow in misery when he should have been working, like Dwight did on his video game.

The romance novels which Oscar did not keep under his desk mostly had to do with star-cross'd lovers and people whom Destiny had groomed for each other, the kind of people you just knew were going to end up married; you knew from the first moment they laid eyes on each other. The romance novels which were not under Oscar's desk weren't the clichéd, mushy kind; they were generally well-written and sober. Not all of them were about gay couples, although most them were. Oscar in fact kept them in a carefully locked drawer in his apartment, because that wasn't the sort of thing you wanted visitors poking around in, not that he had many visitors these days.

Oscar knew that to mix your business life with your personal life was dangerous, and a thousand times more dangerous than usual when your business life took place at Dunder Mifflin, under the baleful glare of Angela, and Michael's ever-vigilant misinterpretation. So he learned to lie, quickly and easily, smiling and making up complex stories to assuage Michael's raised eyebrows and not-so-surreptitious winks.

And they weren't big lies. In fact, he wasn't lonely; he did have friends outside of Dunder Mifflin, friends who were capable of holding a coherent conversation for more than five minutes. He didn't have the severely crippling emotional oddities that most of his co-workers seemed to have. He was a realist, who knew better than to define himself by his boyfriends or lack thereof, and who knew that a steady, secure, moderately well-paying job was nothing to scorn or be ashamed of.

It was just that, sometimes on a particularly foul and rain-drenched Monday morning like this one, Oscar Martinez sat at his desk and sipped his acidic, bitter coffee and wondered where the hell his life had gone.

* * *

Michael did not keep all of Jan's emails saved on his computer, even the ones that were just corporate business and memos and impersonal reminders. He _wanted_ to have them all saved on his computer, but Dwight had told him that Corporate could probably access his emails, and that meant Toby could, too, and Michael would smash his face in with a cinderblock before he would let Toby see – well, anything.

So the emails that Michael did not keep on his computer were instead printed out and stashed in a drawer of the filing cabinet, cleverly filed under L, for 'love'. (L was also for Levinson, but Michael didn't notice that until much, much later.)

He didn't look through them often, of course, because that would have been unprofessional. But sometimes he had days like today – when Jan kicked him in the side and made him fall off the bed and didn't even wake up when he hit the ground. Days like today, when the rain made everything blurry and she didn't even thank him for the toast and the cereal he left out for her. And he knew she loved him – last night had proven that. But still, sometimes it was nice to hear her say it… that is, maybe it would have been nice. He couldn't remember having heard it before.

But that was okay; he just looked through her emails instead, holing up in his office and rifling through the reprimands and reports, searching for a love letter. And he never let himself be disappointed when he didn't find one, no matter how many times he looked.

* * *

"So, how was your weekend?" Kevin grumbled, from amidst the stacks of paper that he always left abandoned on Friday afternoons. It was obvious from his tone that he didn't really care; he had a story to tell about his own weekend, and Oscar knew not to mix personal with professional, it was a lesson he'd learned well. So he didn't tell Kevin about the breakup with Gil, about the messy fight and the shouted insults and that terrible sense of _no closure_, the miasma of unfinished business and good wine choked down like water and the front door slamming shut so hard the doorframe cracked. He didn't tell Kevin about the dulling of romance and the seeds of manipulation, or a Saturday night poisoned by _I hate you _and the fact that he was alone now, alone again.

Kevin was already talking, but Oscar wasn't listening; instead he stared broodingly into the wavering colors of his screensaver. He was, of course, a realist; and the fact that he didn't have a boyfriend anymore didn't bother him overmuch. No, what was bothering him was the faint trace of a hangover headache that still clung to his temples, and the sour taste in his mouth that the coffee couldn't erase. He was a realist; and now was the time for realism, with the columns of accounting figures in front of him and the growling, overcast sky drenching the city in slush.

* * *

Michael hated it when it rained; it was like the clouds were crying. Sometimes he tried to cheer them up, and sometimes he just stayed in his office, trying out depression, to see if it would make him less depressed. Somehow, it never did.

On this particular Monday he opened an email to Jan and wrote, "How was your weekend?" Not because he was actually wondering – after all, they'd spent the weekend together. It would be like their little joke, because he already knew how her weekend had been, but he was asking anyway. He thought about her sitting at home (still in her pajamas) and opening it, and laughing at his wit and cleverness. In the daydream, he could blot out the martini glass in her hand.

He wasn't unhappy. He was happy sometimes – like when they scrapbooked, though they hadn't been doing much of that lately. Like when they made up after a fight… and talked about having kids, having a future. That always made him happy…

The email sat open on his computer screen, blinking, one sentence flickering in and out of existence. Michael thought that single line looked sad and lonely – he thought he should add to the email, write more words to fill up the blankness, maybe add a whole paragraph, with lots of little nouns running around to keep it company. But he couldn't think of anything else to say; and Dwight was knocking on his door.

He hit _Send_. The redundant question vanished from his desktop, evaporating into the cyberspace void. "How was your weekend?"

He thought gloomily that she probably wouldn't answer until Friday – if she bothered to answer at all.

* * *

The story of Oscar's weekend, the story he hadn't told Kevin, had begun with a candlelit dinner and ended in hate. The romantic, the sentimental man, might have taken advantage of Kevin's rambling to indulge in a bout of self-pity as painfully bitter as the office coffee; but Oscar was an accountant, and he locked the sentimentality away into the corner of his mind, the same way he locked the romance novels away in the cabinet. Or, at least, he tried to; but some of it still seeped out, the _unfairness _of it all. How terribly unfair it was that it was so hard to find a good man, how impossible it was to argue with an empty room, or to add and subtract heartache away the way he smudged Michael's little stupidities out of the office finance reports.

Well, he was through with it. Done with Gil, done with all the pain and trepidation of falling in love; what was the point? With the leaden dread of Monday morning pressing down it was too easy to believe that love was impossible; that nothing lay in store for him but Dunder Mifflin finance reports, forever and ever into eternity…

And good riddance. What had boyfriends ever brought him but heartache? What had romance ever done for him, for anyone – look at Dwight, who moaned like an animal and stared like a zombie; look at Angela, who had grown more frigid and sharp-tongued than ever; look at Michael, who was… well, Michael.

* * *

"Thanks, my weekend was fine, Dwight," Michael announced, in answer to the question that Dwight hadn't asked. "I hung out with Jan. We spent all of Saturday together… and all of Sunday, too." He waggled his eyebrows emphatically. "And let me tell you, we were _not _going to church…"

Dwight opened his mouth to say something, but Michael cut him off with a dismissive wave of his hand; he leaned back in his chair, because reclining made him feel powerful and like what he imagined Donald Trump must feel like all the time. Donald Trump, he reflected, could probably get any girl he wanted.

"It's so great to have Jan to go home to every day," Michael sighed. He looked sharply at Dwight, who was standing stiffly at attention while he waited for his superior officer to finish making small talk. "You should get yourself a girl, Dwight," Michael announced. "I bet you'd be much less of a kiss-ass… if you know what I mean." He winked wildly, with no discernible result.

After several more seconds passed during which Dwight remained totally immobile, Michael sighed and slumped forward onto his desk. "Tell me about _your _weekend, Dwight," he groaned, and the rant that followed was almost enough to make him wish that he could be at home with Jan instead of at the Dunder Mifflin office.

Almost.

* * *

"So, how was your weekend?"

The sound of the door opening was almost drowned out by the burst of laughter that accompanied it. Oscar looked up, jolted out of his gloom just in time to catch sight of Jim and Pam staggering into the office, arm in arm, both biting back laughter and soaked to the bone. Jim answered Pam's question with a shrug and a raised eyebrow. "Oh, it was awesome. I met this really great girl."

"Yeah?" Pam prodded, unmistakably mischievous. "Is she pretty?"

"Hmm," Jim's face grew serious, considering. "Nah, I don't think pretty is exactly the word…"

"You jerk!" Pam growled, punching him playfully on the arm; then he reached out to tickle her in return, and the tickle fight got confused, and as the whole office stared at them, Jim leaned down and kissed her.

It was a rather long kiss; the muddy water dripping from their coats had formed a permanent-looking stain in the carpet before they broke apart, only to realize that they were the focus of a half-dozen curious, gape-mouthed stares. Pam immediately flushed a brilliant red and darted behind her desk with a muffled squeak; Jim only smiled his languid smile and sauntered over to his desk as though nothing was wrong.

"What a sickeningly shameful display," Angela murmured, disgust thick in her voice, and Oscar realized with a start that he was smiling.

He shook his head to clear it, and returned to work with a frustrated sigh. It was a rainy Monday morning at Dunder Mifflin, which was about the worst combination of circumstances known to man; and Oscar had just lost a boyfriend, and was very likely never to find another one. He _should _have gone mad by now, he had been working himself up into a fine froth of bitterness and shame…and of course Jim and Pam, the office's resident angelic-perfect couple, had had to just burst in and ruin everything with how easy, how _possible _they made true love seem. Like all the star-cross'd lover stories come to life, in a failing mid-range paper supply company, no less.

"Bitterness is absolutely impossible with those two," he murmured under his breath, almost growling in frustration.

* * *

By the time Michael had finally managed to get rid of Dwight, the hubbub from the outer office had caught his attention instead. He swiveled around and glanced through his blinds just in time to catch sight of Jim and Pam, fully lip-locked in front of the entire office, dripping rainwater and quaking with laughter.

Michael was happy whenever he got to spend his time at Dunder Mifflin; and the sight of Jim and Pam made him doubly happy, as he thought with a snicker how Toby must be going crazy at this completely un-company-regulated PDA.

And for the first time all day, the darker bit of Michael that lurked beneath the outer happiness lightened up a bit; and the Monday stormy-morning gloom lifted away effortlessly, removing the heaviness from Michael's shoulders and freeing him to bounce up and into the office proper. He loved Jim and Pam, and Jim and Pam loved each other, and that was enough to make him smile. After all, what did Michael have to worry about? Why was he all gloomy in the first place? If Jim could find happiness, then Michael definitely would – Jim was only a salesman, after all, and not a very good one at that. Michael, on the other hand, was a _regional manager_, and that had to count for something in this world.

The thought cheered him up immensely. If Jim could have a smokin' hot and happy girlfriend, then Michael could, too. "Who could be depressed with those lovebirds around?" he chuckled, trying to turn some of the frowns in the office upside-down. Jim himself rolled his eyes, while Pam blushed a bit and slouched down behind reception, as though trying to hide.

Michael shook his head, muttered, "I love those crazy kids," and returned to his office, ready to face the day.

* * *

Remember, please review! 


	8. your kiss a city of stars

**Title: **Jam fluff

**Series:** The Office

**Theme No.:** 32; your kiss a city of stars

**Pairing: **Jim/Pam

**Rating: **PG-13

**Notes: **I have this to say, with the most heartfelt seriousness: Writer's block should die.

Anyway, I feel I need to apologize for this one. I wasn't really sure whether it was going to be a serious piece or just a bit of fluff, and I think it emerged as a weird sort of hybrid made up of both. So yet again, I must ask you to be kind -- and please, review!

* * *

The reception was just as the invitation had been; tastefully decorated in dark blue and silver, quiet and elegant, with ribbon, shimmer, and shine around the edges. Pam cast a jaded eye around the room, trying to record every detail; she memorized the way her high heels made her feet ache, and the frigid air on her bare arms, and the sour taste that the fancy cocktail had left in her mouth after a single sip. She glared around the wide room at the well-dressed people milling about in various stages of socialization; she was determined to hate them, to hate all of them and their stupid party, because hate was better than fear.

She was so focused on the scrutinizing the party that she almost didn't see Jim materializing out of the crowd; the sight of him was enough to distract her for a moment, and she couldn't keep from smiling despite herself as she looked him up and down with a critical eye.

He was dressed in a tuxedo, at Pam's insistence. It was a proper ensemble, black and white and expensive and about the fanciest thing she had ever seen him wear; but somehow he managed to make it seem like a t-shirt and jeans, with the slight slouch to his shoulders and his hands in his pockets and his face lit up by that languid summer-afternoon smile… she really shouldn't have been surprised. Both the tux and the party were so un-Jim that they brought out his inner Jimness much more clearly by contrast. Pam had to bite back laughter at the thought.

He strolled through the press of people, ducking around the buffet and bar and making a beeline for the corner table where Pam sat, rigid with nerves, sweeping her glare across the room. He raised an eyebrow at her in a silent question, and she suddenly realized that her hands were clenched in the fabric of the royal-blue tablecloth so hard that her knuckles had turned white. She let go with a sheepish grin, the first she had dared all night.

Jim didn't sit down beside her as she'd expected, and as she was silently pleading him to do. Instead, he stopped before her and offered his arm, as courtly as any knight. "Shall we dance?" he asked innocently. From anyone else, it would have been outdated or mocking, but from Jim… Pam heaved a hopeless sigh and stood, taking his arm and allowing him to lead her out onto the too-small dance floor.

They didn't dance; they swayed, in a rhythm of their own which had absolutely nothing to do with the music blaring through the room.

Jim pulled Pam in closer until she was practically in his arms; they stayed like that, swaying gently, buffeted by the waves of other dancers that surged and subsided along with the beat. For the first time in hours, Pam found herself completely relaxed, almost against her will; she couldn't help it, Jim's warmth and his arms around her soothed away all of the nervousness, all of the fear (well, almost all of it).

"So," he murmured into her ear under the loud crashing of the music. "Are you feeling as weird about this as I am?"

"Way more," Pam answered immediately, without a thought. Then she smiled, tightening her arms around him. "You have no idea how glad I am to hear you say that."

"Well, I'm glad you're so happy about my pain," he teased, but didn't let go. Then, much more quietly so she almost had to strain to hear him, and a little wary and a little afraid; "Don't look now, but she's coming over here."

"What?" She'd hoped he was kidding; it would be just like him, to spring a trick like that on her. But then she disobeyed his orders and twisted around to look behind her, and sure enough, the press of people was forming an especially dense knot around a woman in a dark blue dress who was slowly but surely heading their way.

"I told you not to look," Jim scolded, cupping her cheek in his hand and turning her back to face him again. "Maybe if we're really, really quiet, they won't notice us –"

"Hey, Jim. Pam."

The greeting was a little sharp and a little icy, but not nearly as bad as the ones Pam had been rehearsing in the depths of her terrified imagination for the past few hours; it was meant to pinprick, not to wound.

With the devil-may-care grin of a soldier about to duck into the line of fire, Pam turned around to face her challenger, though she didn't move out of Jim's arms.

"Hey, Karen, it's nice to see you," she said warmly, and was surprised to find that she meant it. Karen Fillipelli hadn't outwardly changed much since her Scranton days; but suddenly the smile Pam had always hated didn't seem so menacing. Maybe it had something to do with the warm strength of Jim's arms still lightly around her waist.

"Nice to see you too," Karen replied, and if there was stiffness or scorn in her voice, it was hardly noticeable. "I'm so glad you two could make it. The time I spent at Scranton definitely wouldn't have been the same without you."

"Yeah…" Pam hesitated, unsure of what to say next; she could feel the awkwardness settling in like nightfall, but thankfully some other guest distracted Karen's attention, and she shook Jim's hand and gracefully fled.

"Huh." Jim resettled his arms around Pam, pulling her a little closer (for her protection or his own, she couldn't tell). "Terrace?"

"It's a balcony," Pam answered, "and I'll meet you there in five minutes. I'll get the drinks."

* * *

Twilight found them on a marble balcony, thirteen stories above New York City, looking out over the forest of glass-frosted spires and neon and red radio lights down below. The early edge of winter sharpened the chill in the air, so that the horizon seemed crystal-clear and endless. The flaming colors of the sunset were already bleeding away, leaving only the soft, heavy blue and scarlet of night to billow out across the sky.

Pam leaned on the railing, ignoring the frigid wind, watching the lights flare up all across the city. Jim leaned against the glass door, which he had firmly shut, blocking off the music and chatter of the party; for a long while the two of them stood in a space of silence, as Pam watched the horizon and Jim watched Pam.

Finally Jim crossed the balcony in three strides and stood next to her, tucking his hands into his pockets, which completely ruined his attempt to look like businesslike. "Hey," he said softly, so the wind almost snatched his words away. "You okay?"

"Yeah," Pam answered, but she didn't turn to look at him. They waited in silence for a few more minutes; then she said abruptly, "Why do you think she invited us?"

"I don't know." Jim took his hands out of his pockets and leaned against the railing next to his girlfriend, close enough that their shoulders touched. "To gloat, maybe." But he wasn't sure he believed it himself, and uncertainty wavered in his voice.

"Maybe." Pam clearly didn't believe that either; she sighed, and rested her head on Jim's shoulder, moving a little closer against the biting cold of the wind. "Does she think you'd be jealous of something like that? Of her promotion to Corporate? I mean, you withdrew your name from consideration…"

"Yeah, but I think we all know why I did that," he chuckled, throwing an arm around Pam's shoulders and pulling her into a short embrace.

"Yeah," Pam murmured, but the smile fell from Jim's face at the strength of uncertainty in that single word. Another stretch of silence threatened; Jim often prided himself on knowing what Pam was thinking even in silence, but now he could only hold her close, waiting for some clue.

Night had fully fallen now, and the glare of the city lights had almost blotted out the moon; it was easy to believe that they were looking out into a still lake, where each lit window was the reflection of single far-flung star.

"You could have had all this, you know," Pam said quietly. Jim tore his gaze from the tableau of lights to look down at her instead, and his heart shuddered and leapt into his throat; the sight of her amazed him as the sight of the night-lit city had not. He reached out and captured a stray curl that had been blown about by the breeze, and tucked it back behind her ear, letting his fingers linger on her cheek.

"Yeah," he breathed, as she turned to look up at him with wide dark eyes. "I know."

"Seriously, Jim," she protested, her voice wavering a little now from something other than uncertainty. "Don't you ever think about it? You could have had all this – Karen, the promotion to Corporate, the city, everything." She waved a hand out over the balcony, and the gesture encompassed every inch and detail of the many million lives going on below. "Instead, you just have – Scranton. Selling paper." She wrapped her arms around herself, self-conscious, hoping he wouldn't hear the bitterness in her voice. The end of the sentence hung in the air, unspoken but deafening. _You have me._

"Honestly?" Jim captured both her hands in his own, grinning with relief. So that was all that was bothering her – what with all the weirdness they'd been through tonight, he had been afraid it was much worse.

"Yeah, honestly would be nice," Pam snorted, a little of the old sarcasm coming back into her voice. Jim only chortled, turning to face her and wrapping his arms around her.

"Honestly," he told her, "I never think about it at all. I'm pretty happy with what I have." She opened her mouth to protest, and Jim could see all the lights of New York City reflected in her eyes. "No, really," he said quickly, cutting her off. "I don't want any of that stuff. Besides," he added, with a slight smirk, "I don't think any of that could compare to this."

Before she could ask him what he meant, before she could even work up a good suspicious glare, he leaned down and kissed her. She rose to her tiptoes to meet him, and then his hands were on the small of her back and hers were running through his hair; the passion in the kiss surprised them both, flaring hot against the chill of night, and bright enough to burn out the stars.

They finally had to come up for air, but even then they stayed entangled in each other, refusing to move away. "I can't believe you," Jim murmured, as Pam rested her head against his chest and closed her eyes. "We've been together for six months. I've been in love with you for _years_. Do you really still think I'd give that up? For anything?"

"I don't know," Pam sighed, "It's just that there's so much here and Scranton's so stupid and boring and sometimes I can't believe you'd settle for just me." She didn't look up at him, but Jim swore he could feel the heat as she blushed scarlet with shame. "I'm sorry…"

"You should be," he growled, but gently. "Seriously, Beesley. Have some faith. I love you, okay? Not Karen. _You_." Now he placed two fingers under her chin, tilting her head up so he could look into her eyes, so he could impress upon her how serious he was. Serious was a rare thing for him, and he wanted to make sure she didn't miss it.

"Trust me," he said assuredly, with all the Jimlike swagger he could muster. "The city life isn't all it's cracked up to be."

The glare of ten thousand lights chased the shadows from his face, glinting in his smile and fading out the stars. He leaned in closer, until his forehead rested against hers, and the clouds of their breath mingled in the cold night air.

"In fact," he murmured, "I'm pretty sure I could forget it entirely… if you distracted me… with a kiss."

Pam was only half-surprised to find that regret was eclipsed by the light of the jealous moon, and uncertainty melted in the warmth of his arms.

"I think I can do that," she chuckled, half-breathless and low.

The sleepless city, the city of stars, spread out before them in a breathtaking portrait that glittered with all the myriad jewels of night. But Jim and Pam had found something better to do, so neither one of them noticed.

* * *

For some weird reason, everything I write hovers at the level of three reviews per chapter. Let's try and beat that average! Come on, I know you can do it!

Please, review. I have no other measure of my own adequacy. Shall I hang up my pen, or continue to write random Jam fluff? I need your opinions, dear readers!


	9. take aim like Artemis

**Title: **Jam fluff

**Series:** The Office

**Theme No.:** 39; Take aim like Artemis

**Pairing: **Jim/Pam

**Rating: **PG-13

**Notes: **I'd say this takes place a few days after "The Job"; that is, when Jim and Pam have just barely started dating. In fact, I'm going to say that they've been officially dating for about three days. And I'm going to say it's during the winter. Just go with me on this. Oh, and I should say that this chapter has also been inspired by a moment that I've seen repeated in several romantic comedies, a little meme that always struck me as silly and endearing at the same time. You'll find it enacted in the last part of this story.

Enjoy, and review!

* * *

"Jim…"

The office was quiet, settling into the trough of the afternoon lull. The constant click and clatter of computer keyboards ebbed and flowed, a tide of white noise so powerful that a determined prankster could whisper under it without fear of being overheard.

"Psst. Jim."

Jim leaned forward over his keyboard, focusing intently on his computer screen and the client information displayed there. He was working on a very important account, and he was determined not to let anything – or anyone – distract him. Especially not a certain someone who had cruelly mocked his favorite movie the night before. Sure, it had only been their second date, but he felt that she deserved to be punished.

(They hadn't kissed goodnight; in fact, they hadn't really kissed yet at all. And while that had undeniably been punishment, it had been equally hard on both of them, so it didn't count. Plus, it hadn't been Jim's idea; poisonous awkwardness and years of not-quite-sure about their relationship had taken hold. So now it was time for real, prank-level punishment, and leaving her to fend for herself in the boredom of the office seemed sufficient.)

"_Jim!_"

There was still no response, and the tone of the whispers was growing more pointed as Pam realized she wasn't going to get an answer anytime soon. Jim was still working blithely away, without a care in the world; although he did seem to be having trouble hiding the smile that showed he could hear her after all.

Pam gave up. She was bored to death, and obviously her favorite co-conspirator wasn't going to be of any help today. She would have to find some other way to amuse herself…

She glanced idly around the office, searching for inspiration. Her eye fell by complete accident on Dwight's desk, which was empty, its owner being out on a sales call that (with luck) would take the rest of the day. The surface of the desk was clean with the sort of manic orderliness that Pam had always regarded as the sign of a deranged mind. And there, right in its usual place, ideally sitting atop a stack of three-ring binders, was an empty coffee cup.

It was a sucker's shot. Pam, who had been playing this game for years, could have made it in her sleep. The paper clip sailed in a perfect arc and clanged against the cup's porcelain sides, to the deafening sounds of no one else caring.

Jim looked up for second, blinking in surprise at the missile that had flown so close to him, then snapped his eyes back to the computer screen as realization dawned. But it was too late – he had known Pam wasn't going to take being ignored easily, and he had shown her a crack in his armor. Now it was only a matter of time; Pam allowed herself a wicked grin of her own.

The next paperclip made the coffee cup as effortlessly as the first, and the third one wobbled in the air a bit but hit the mark without fail. Jim's eyes were wide as he read his notes, and he was clearly worried that when Pam tired of the coffee cup, her next target would be him. But he wasn't going to give in now, so he said nothing, and ignored the taunting smirk she was surely throwing his way. (He didn't need to look at her. He could _feel_ it.)

Pam loaded the fourth paperclip into a rubber band to give it some extra speed; she pulled the elastic back and snapped it forward in one smooth motion, watching with satisfaction as the shot flew straight and true, rocketing into the cup with a barely-audible _dink_.

But then the cup wobbled on its platform, set off-balance by the force of the impact. The rubber band had been too much! The cup was tilting backwards, falling as though in slow motion. Pam could only watch in horror as all of her work, her only chance at entertainment in the next few hours, toppled slowly backwards and plummeted towards the desk. She braced herself for the crash –

-- which never came.

When she dared to look again, Pam had to bite back laughter at the sight of Jim, who had lunged across his own desk and Dwight's to steady the coffee cup just in the nick of time.

He slowly righted the cup and sat back in his chair again, all the while pinning her with the best glare he could muster. The message was as clear as if he'd whispered it in her ear; _You win this time, but I'll get you back. Just you wait._

Pam settled back in her chair, crossing her arms over her chest and grinning in triumph. Her own smile was a challenge; _I'd like to see you try._

"Fine," Jim growled under his breath, and closed the screen on his computer. Work was one thing, but this was something else entirely. This was important. This was war.

The latest copy of his expense report made a perfect paper football, and a client's information sheet was admirably suited to airplane-building. Within minutes, Jim had a respectable arsenal of his own spread out on his desk. He wasted only a moment glancing around the office to make sure no one else was paying attention, then carefully selected a sleek, thin fighter plane made out of a sheet of the company's best cardstock.

He slowly, carefully turned around in his chair and launched the plane; it wobbled and tilted and eventually crashed against the back of Pam's computer; she fished it out, sticking her tongue out at Jim, who only grinned in return.

The plane was retrieved and hastily repaired, then sent soaring back across the aisle – but not before Pam scribbled something on the inside. Jim caught it effortlessly and unfolded it until he could read the message scrawled across the wings. It read, _Nice crash landing. I get the feeling you've done this before – class clown in high school, right?_

Jim tossed the used plane over his shoulder and folded a new one, this time writing _what, you can't just use email like everyone else? _across the length of it. The launch was a dubious success; the plane nosedived past Pam's outstretched hand and ended up crumpled on the carpet behind her desk.

This time Pam's return volley was a crumpled-up note that landed perfectly in Dwight's coffee cup. Jim pulled it out and opened it, smirking as he read the message. _Nope, I'm just too creative. By the way, your aim sucks._

Gasping in mock outrage, Jim scribbled a reply and tossed it too quickly; it bounced off the front of Pam's desk and rolled away towards the hall. He immediately turned to glare at Pam, who had a hand over her mouth to disguise her smile; the necessary snarky comment came only a few seconds later, in the form of a folded Post-it note. On it was scrawled, _you missed._

"Duh," Jim murmured, but not loud enough that she could hear it. He pulled out yet another sheet of paper and bit the end of his pen, trying to come up with something sarcastic yet funny to write back; but before he could think of anything, the silence was split by a bone-rattling crash that made the whole office jump in their seats and turn to look at the door.

Dwight appeared beside reception, striking what he obviously thought was a superhero's pose as he found himself the focus of a dozen stares. "I return victorious!" he bellowed, punching the air with both fists; Andy started to applaud, everyone else returned to their various ways of wasting time, and Michael burst from his office to celebrate the prodigal salesman's return.

Jim placed the pen back down on his desk, sweeping the remains of his paper airplane arsenal into the shadow of a stack of binders with the same motion. Dwight finished regaling Michael with the tale of his successful sale, and stomped back over to his desk without acknowledging his deskmate with so much as a nod.

"Good job, Dwight," Jim said, carefully eyeing the coffee cup which was still balanced between Dwight's desk and his, where he'd left after retrieving Pam's last note. Something pinged on his computer screen; an incoming message. Carefully, without making any sudden moves, he slid one hand along his desk and opened it.

_Tell me you took the paperclips out of his mug_, the message read; and Jim could practically hear the half-horrified, half-laughing whisper of a prankster about to be caught.

"Only doing my job," Dwight responded briskly, and it took Jim a minute to figure out what he was talking about.

"Oh. Right. Well, still, congratulations." Jim grinned his friendliest grin and reached out to shake Dwight's hand, knocking over his coffee mug with his elbow. "Oh, darn," he commented, setting the cup back in place. "Sorry about that."

"Smooth move, Halpert," Dwight snorted, and snatched the cup away. He retreated into the kitchen, and Jim caught sight of him through the window, making a cup of coffee, apparently without noticing any paperclips out of place.

Jim leaned back in his chair, smirking. Sure enough, within minutes another message popped up on his screen; _all right, fine. Nice job. But don't get cocky, Halpert. Your aim still sucks and you can't fly paper airplanes to save your life._

Jim wheeled around to face Pam's evil smile, placing a hand over his heart and feigning hurt. _You're killing me, Beesley,_ he complained. Pam's evil smile didn't diminish in the least, and the next message popped up in record time.

_Just wait till five o'clock_, it taunted. _You ain't seen nothing yet._

* * *

Five o'clock never came fast enough, and today was no exception. Jim hadn't seen anything like it since high school, when the sound of the bell sent several thousand teenagers stampeding for the exits; the second that clock hand moved into place, half the office was up and out the door.

Years of synchronized pranking had taught him to keep one eye on the receptionist's desk at all times. Pam was dawdling, organizing her desk, so Jim clamped down on his instinct to escape and decided to become intensely interested in arranging his binders. He and Pam stood at the same moment, and just happened to leave the office within paces of each other; by sheer luck, and by pressing the close button repeatedly to keep Andy from getting in with them, they ended up alone in the elevator.

The dark chill of a winter night had already fallen as they left the building, walking side by side and carefully not holding hands. They had only been dating for a few days, and they hadn't quite figured out how to handle saying goodbye at the end of the day; was it the sort of thing that you weren't supposed to make a big deal over? Or, Jim couldn't help wondering, was it a separation important enough to let him steal a kiss?

"So," Pam sighed, pausing under a streetlight in the parking lot, fiddling with her purse. The look that crossed her face was one Jim recognized; it was the same bewildered mix of confusion, frustration, insecurity and longing that marked the end of every first date, and the end of every day at work since their first date together.

"So," Jim echoed quietly, as he tried and failed to keep from staring. The bright white light of the streetlamp spilled down over them like liquid silver, like moonlight distilled; their shadows mingled on the pavement stretched out behind them, and the clouds of their breath mingled in the frigid air.

"So," Pam repeated, and the light glinted brilliantly off of her smile.

"What were we talking about again?" Jim asked, only half laughing. In that moment, he would have sworn he could see the moon rising in her eyes, and to judge by the way she was looking up at him, her thoughts weren't far off.

"I don't know," she said seriously, and in they both reached out at the same time and clasped each others' hands.

There was another beat of silence, but Jim suddenly realized that it was a lost cause; he wasn't brave enough yet to do anything other than climb back into his car and drive home. He had wanted this – this look in her eyes for him, and only him – too much for too long, and he was still half-terrified that if he held onto this feeling too tightly, it would break. He couldn't shake the thought that if he kissed her, she would vanish, just one more daydream out of his ten of thousands, and he didn't think he could come through that and survive.

"I'd better get home," she sighed, echoing his thoughts. "See you tomorrow."

"Yeah, tomorrow," he answered, helpless and frustrated and feeling unaccountably stupid. Then, because he had come too far to be awkward for the rest of his life, he leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.

As he took a step back, he was surprised to find her grinning up at him, a smile so wide and so full of mirth that he found himself afraid he'd done something wrong, or he'd been the victim of some prank – that all of this, their dating, had been some kind of joke and now she was going to say "Gotcha!" at last…

What she actually said was, "You missed."

Jim blinked, his train of thought completely derailed. After a few minutes he said, "What?"

"You missed," Pam repeated. Then, before he had the chance to ask again, she reached up and grabbed his head in both hands, rising up on her toes to kiss him for real – to kiss him with the pent-up love and longing of so many silent years, with the impatience of waiting for far too long, with the joy of not having to wait any more and the end of awkwardness, the end of lying by omission and all the things she had hated about life.

They broke apart slowly, dazed and dizzy, letting go of each other by degrees. First they managed to move far enough apart that their heartbeats were no longer indistinguishable; they then were just holding onto each other; and finally they had backed up a pace or two, afraid of getting lost in these new sensations, forcing themselves to be content with holding hands, with touching fingertips.

There was a long breathless pause.

"See you tomorrow," Pam said finally, faint but firm.

"Yeah," Jim managed. "See you tomorrow." Then Pam was gone, walking away into the darkness towards her car, and Jim was left standing alone in the shallow pool of light that felt like a fever on his skin and filled his brain like a rising moon.

"Tomorrow," he repeated to himself, giving the idea some serious thought. A whole day of sitting at his desk, three feet away from Pam with nothing to do. A whole day of stolen glances and moments alone in the break room, in the hall.

"See you tomorrow," he murmured to the darkness. Then, grinning so wide it hurt, he strolled out into the night.

* * *

Thanks for all the wonderful feedback I've been getting – and keep it up! Not only does it inspire me to write faster, it gives you karma points for being awesome people. So if you want good karma, review! 


	10. solipsism in winter

**Title:**Jam fluff

**Series:** The Office

**Theme No.:** 49; Solipsism in winter

**Pairing:**Jim/Pam

**Rating:**PG-13

**Notes:**This is set in season 3, around where Benihana Christmas is. Except I'm pretending that Benihana never happened; this happened instead. Because by Benihana, I was getting very sick of Jim not coming to his senses, and what better way to vent those frustrations than through fanfiction?

I tried to keep Jim and Pam as human as possible in this chapter, because the show makes them seem so real; it makes melodrama difficult. I'm sorry if I overdid it a bit; I can't help it. Whenever I write angst, I tend to get carried away, but don't worry -- there's more fluffl coming soon!

Please be kind, and review!

* * *

Jim had always said that the office Christmas party was either a joke or a nightmare, depending on how drunk you got. Pam had gulped down two martinis so far, and was still drowning in the slow, suffocating misery of a bad dream; she wondered if another few drinks would make things any funnier. Probably not.

The day had been funny to start out with. David Wallace had invited Michael, along with other branch managers in Pennsylvania, to what had apparently started off as a formal, exclusive business meeting; but Michael had decided to combine that celebration with the office's own party, so had dragged the entire staff out to a fancy golf course in the middle of the day. After driving an hour and a half through the sleet and snow – which had arrived just in time for Christmas – most of the Scranton workers were ready to have a few drinks, relax, and watch Michael humiliate himself.

But Michael had brought the warehouse staff along too, and Roy was being… well, himself, and then there had been the whole mistletoe fiasco, and suddenly Pam was seized by the panicked desperation which had become a daily fixture of working at Dunder Mifflin – the feeling of suffocation, of too many eyes on her, of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and praying with all her heart to disappear.

So she ran away – because that was all she could think of to do, all she was capable of doing. She ran away from the party in the country club, trudging through the three inches of snow on the golf course grounds to take shelter in a small white gazebo at the bottom of the hill.

At least Jim hadn't been there. As she sat shivering without her jacket, staring into the white grounds and the white sky, she could be grateful for that, at least. She could thank God that Jim hadn't been there.

She closed her eyes as another sob threatened to escape her; it built up in the back of her throat, hot and tight. She gripped the edges of the wooden bench until she was afraid her fingers would bleed, but that didn't stop the hot tears from leaking down her cheeks, and then she lost control completely. She doubled over, burying her face in her arms, and cried until her shoulders shook from the force of the shame and burning embarrassment and frustration that flooded through her in waves.

She sobbed into the silence of the snowy afternoon, until the tears dried up and she was left feeling hollow and half-dead and wishing that the snow would fall forever and swallow her up; so she would never have to go back up to that building and face Roy, never have to go back to the office and sit at her desk not facing Jim…

She was so wrapped up in the terrible longing that she almost didn't hear the soft crunching of approaching footsteps in the snow.

"Hey," a soft voice said in her ear and suddenly her world went beyond nightmare, beyond jokes and tears and embarrassment and bad dreams; now it was on the level of hallucination, too-perfect daydreams and the sort of thing that made you take a step back and say, _how the hell could the universe do this to me?_

Jim was standing there, his hands buried in his jacket pockets, his expression serious – but it was the kind of not-smile that made Pam wish he would smile, because a smile would have been so much easier to brush off than the depth of his quiet eyes.

"Hey!" Pam gasped, unable to hide her surprise. "I thought you were home sick!"

"I was," he said, and she could see he was telling the truth; his messy hair was much messier than usual, as if he'd just rolled out of bed, and his voice was rasping and hoarse. As he climbed up to join her in the shelter of the gazebo, she caught sight of what he was wearing under his jacket – a t-shirt with his high school logo on it, which was the shirt he slept in when he was sick. As he sat down beside her, she wondered how she knew that.

"Oh, good," Pam said faintly, fighting to keep herself focused on the present, on the disconcerting warmth of him beside her, staving off the bitter cold. "For a while I was afraid you were playing hooky and didn't invite me."

His chuckle turned into a wracking cough, and Pam had to fold her hands tightly in her lap to keep from touching him – the urge to smooth his messy hair back, the sympathy and worry, were so overwhelming that they almost made her dizzy. "Aww, poor Jim," she said, as laughingly as she could – this was wrong, horribly wrong, he wasn't even her friend anymore, he ignored her in the office and kissed Karen and didn't seem to care that it was killing her. But he was here now, sitting next to her like nothing was wrong. "So, what are you doing here?"

"Phyllis called me, believe it or not," he answered, and the smile he gave her was wan and tired, but still that same crooked Jim smile, like the sun breaking out from behind a storm; then it was gone, and he was completely serious again. "She said you were pretty upset."

"Oh." It was like a punch in the stomach; she suddenly remembered why she was hiding here among the whiteness of sky and snow, why she had run away from the warm party and the people and the laughter. "It's stupid," she said softly. "It doesn't matter. It definitely wasn't worth coming all the way up here." He scowled, and Pam was terrified and ashamed to feel the tears welling up in her eyes again, stinging on her frozen skin.

"Hey," Jim murmured, clearly alarmed; he raised his hand, his fingers hovering above her cheek for a full thirty seconds until he finally gathered the courage to brush the tears away, lightly, barely touching her as though afraid her skin would burn him. "Hey, it's not stupid." But acute embarrassment and pain and uncertainty clashed in his expression; seeing that was worse than a knife through her heart, and Pam pulled away.

"What are you doing here?" she asked again, angrily wiping her eyes with the back of her hand – she didn't want him to see her being stupid and foolish and weak. "You shouldn't have come," she blurted out. "I'm fine." Jim raised his eyebrows and opened his mouth to challenge that statement, but before he could Pam cut him off. "And if I wasn't, why would you care?"

That hurt him; he physically flinched, and Pam felt a short, sharp swell of vindictive pride. Then his eyes darkened with anger, and it was Pam's turn to flinch away as he reached out and touched her hand, frighteningly gentle. "Is that what you think?" he demanded, and his rasping voice turned it into a growl. "That I don't care? You seriously believe that?"

"Of course I believe that," Pam snapped back. "That's how you act, all day every day – and I know you, Jim. You're not that good a liar."

"You have no idea what you're talking about," Jim said softly. Pam only scowled, staring down at her hands, resolutely ignoring the burning and prickling behind her eyes. For a long time neither of them said anything; and the silence of the snow-muffled afternoon flooded in between them.

As the smoldering tension slowly cooled, Pam lost her grip on the rage and frustration that had burned in the pit of her stomach, keeping her warm, and she remembered that it was freezing out, and the bitter cold seeped into her skin until she was shivering, gritting her teeth to keep them from chattering, and still resolutely not looking at Jim.

Then an unexpected warmth enveloped her, and she turned around, half-shocked and digging her fingers into the fabric of the jacket Jim had draped around her shoulders. She didn't have the energy to be angry anymore. She only shrugged the jacket off and wordlessly handed it back to him; "Don't be stupid. You're sick," she sighed when he arched an eyebrow at her in question. He took the jacket, but didn't put it on; instead he set it on his lap, twisting the cloth between his hands.

There was another breath of silence, while Pam began to regret not taking Jim's jacket; she moved a little closer, both to hear him better and to take advantage of the warmth of his body beside hers. "What are you doing here?" she asked, more softly this time. "Really, Jim. Tell me the truth."

"I told you," Jim answered evenly. "Phyllis called me. She said you and Roy had a fight, and… I don't know. I thought maybe you'd want to talk."

"That's it?" Pam asked, incredulous. "That's why you drove up here? Just because you thought I'd maybe want to talk about something that isn't important anyway?"

Jim hesitated for a moment, then smiled, conceding defeat. "All right, so maybe I had some selfish reasons," he admitted, but guilt still flared up in the pit of Pam's stomach – he clearly felt terrible despite his joking tone, and the glint in his eyes drew her attention to the flush of fever on his skin.

"You should go home," she said again, and hastened to explain as he looked down at her with hurt in his eyes. "You should be in bed, Jim," she said. "We can talk later. I'll call you tonight, okay? Just… go home and get some sleep." She hesitantly reached out and touched his hand, praying he wouldn't see how much it cost her to fake a smile. "I'm fine, okay? I promise."

Jim studied her for a moment, then said, "I'm not."

"I_know_," Pam sighed, getting frustrated. "That's what I'm saying. I know you just…"

"No, not that," he interrupted her, eyes burning with something more than fever. "I mean – not just right now, _all the time_. Every day. Everything's not fine – _nothing's_ fine. Not anymore." He stopped, took a deep breath, and tried again. "Ever since I came back from Stamford," he said slowly, carefully, "Things have been… different. And I keep telling myself, I keep telling _you_ that it's good, that it's fine, but it's not. I'm not. Not at all." He stared at her for a long minute, and she was terrified but couldn't look away.

"That's why I'm here," he said forcefully. "Because I was sitting at home thinking about it, and I realized… I don't want to be this way for the rest of my life." Pam wasn't breathing, she couldn't think straight, her head was full of heat and light and she could only pray for the words to come out of his mouth, for him to say what she had been wanting to hear so much it hurt. Instead he sighed and said, "I don't want to be like Roy."

That name jarred her, confused her. "What are you talking about? What about Roy?"

"You don't love him, do you," Jim said quietly. It wasn't a question, and Pam was surprised to find how little it hurt. It was something she had accepted a while ago, when Jim left her life and took her chance at wedded bliss with him.

She didn't answer, but Jim nodded as if she had. "I don't want that to happen to me," he said, and Pam was surprised to hear the terror in his voice, like a child in the claws of a nightmare. "I don't want to wake up one day and realized that I've been an ass and I've pushed you away and now it's too late. And so I had to come – to say I'm sorry. I'm sorry I've been a jerk. I don't ever want to hurt you – and I don't think I ever told you that. I wasn't sure you knew."

"No, I know," Pam said shakily, and she did know – she had doubted it for a while, but his absolute misery, his pleading and panic, restored her faith. "I'm sorry, too," she added. "I've been just as terrible to you. Not much of a friend." Not a friend, or anything more.

But they were treading the line of dangerous honesty, and they couldn't think of anything else safe to say. They sat in silence for a while, sitting too close to each other and watching the snow, but it was a silence blessedly free of awkward fidgetings, uncertainty and fear. Finally Pam said, "Karen must be really mad that you're here."

Jim scowled, thrown off by the mention of Karen as Pam had been by his comment about Roy. "She did seem pretty pissed off, now that I think about it," he murmured. "I wonder why."

"I would be too, if I was your girlfriend," she sighed, and left it at that. He gave her a puzzled look, but didn't press the issue. If he had, Pam would have been forced to tell him that Karen was jealous; jealous because Jim hadn't thought it was worth it to come to work to see her, but had made the trip in a heartbeat for Pam.

"You know what? It doesn't matter," Jim declared, catching Pam by surprise. "Karen can be mad if she wants – I bet Roy's not too happy either. But none of that _matters_." Hesitant despite his bravado, he grabbed her hand, entwining his fingers with hers. "This is all that matters," he said softly, gesturing to the little gazebo, and the snow, and the two of them and the great white emptiness beyond.

"That's not the way it works, Jim," she snapped, but it was too late; she could feel his words working, changing the world around them, erasing past and future. "You can't just say that and make it true." She fought against it, feebly, trying to cling to what sanity she could. "You have a _girlfriend_."

"Doesn't matter," he said immediately, and was shocked and horrified to see hot tears welling up in Pam's eyes.

"Yes, it does matter!" she cried. "Karen and Roy are real people, you can't just brush them aside like that, you can't just get rid of everything we've been through, everything _I've_ been through, just like that! You can't…"

This time there was no embarrassment, no uncertainty; Jim immediately drew Pam into his arms, stroking her hair as she cried into his chest, sobbing for old wounds and confusion and pain so persistent she didn't know how to live without it.

"You're right," he murmured into her ear, as she calmed down and pulled away from him, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. "You're right. I'm sorry. It does matter – just, not right now. Not right this minute." She looked at him warily, confused. "Listen, I just – Phyllis called me and said you and Roy had had a fight, and you were upset, and then _I _got upset, and I got so angry… and I thought about why and, well, it made me think about some things." He reached out and took her hands again, gratified when she didn't pull away. "About what's important to me. And what I want to be important to me, and what I should do… I just want you to be happy, and _I_want to be happy. I'm not happy." He paused, gathering his courage, and asked, "Are you?"

Pam didn't answer. She didn't need to.

"That's what matters," Jim finished, "and some of it's my fault. I want to fix it." He paused, waiting for instructions, for guidance. What could she say – _break up with Karen? Forget the last few months ever happened? Rewind to Casino Night and let me try again?_

She took a deep breath. "Go home, Jim," she sighed. "Just go home."

The look in his eyes was one of betrayal and agony. Pam added, "I'll meet you at your place. Roy can get a ride home from Darryl." Jim's expression shifted to confusion, but before he could ask Pam explained, "We need to talk, and it's really cold out here. Okay?"

He smiled faintly, and Pam caught a glimpse of the old Jim, the one who had gone to Stamford and never come back – until now. "Okay," he agreed, and stood up, shrugging into his jacket. They stepped down from the gazebo and trudged off through the snow together, in the direction of the parking lot, and home, and freedom.

Before they were halfway there, Pam noticed with a slight shock that they were holding hands – and with a small pang of alarm, she realized she didn't know who had reached for whom. But the warmth of Jim's hand in hers gave her strength, and she realized he had been right all along; Roy and Karen faded to background shadows when she held Jim's hand, and all the reasons to stay away from him suddenly dwindled and were gone.

Tomorrow they would have to deal with exes and suspicious glances and whispers and screams. But for now they were alone in a world of endless snow and overdue honesty, and nothing else mattered at all.

* * *

You've all been so wonderful, don't stop now! Remember, reviews make me happy, and the happier I am, the faster I write, so review, please! 


	11. it is not for me to leave the game

**Title: **Jam fluff

**Series:** The Office

**Theme No.:** 48; you have set me among those who are defeated. I know it is not for me to win, nor to leave the game

**Pairing: **Jim/Pam

**Rating: **PG-13

**Notes: **I know it's been a painfully long time since I've updated. You can blame writer's block and lack of self-confidence for that. I think it's one of the hazards of the job – I've actually written quite a lot, but this is the first thing in a long time that I've been even remotely happy with. Oh, and just to warn you – the dates under the titles are completely made up. I watched all the episodes out of order, so my sense of sequence is probably way off. So, for your edification;

Solitaire – pre-documentary

DDR – during Michael's Birthday

Hide and Seek – just before The Negotiation

Truth or Dare – sometime in Season 3

Spin the Bottle – post-Season 4

Thanks. Please read and enjoy!

* * *

**i. Solitaire**

_2002_-_2003_

Pam had read her job description once, a long time ago, when she'd first started working at Dunder Mifflin. It said something about helping to maximize excellence and productivity by being an administrative assistant for the office.

After two weeks of working there, she had decided what that nonsense really meant was that it was her job to babysit Michael and make sure he didn't injure himself or offend anyone who was really important or do anything else boneheadedly stupid.

After a year of working there, Pam had realized that she didn't even have that much responsibility -- Michael would pretty much be his boneheaded self no matter what she did. Most people did their own faxes and made their own copies, and there were maybe a handful of phone calls a day, which took about three seconds each.

Mostly, Pam played Solitaire.

It had started out as an innocent way to pass the time, and before long Pam could truthfully say, without exaggeration, that winning a game was the most pleasant and exciting thing that happened all day at work.

And then, mostly out of sheer boredom, Pam developed a _strategy _at playing Solitaire and then, later, Spider Solitaire. She tried to coordinate her moves so she could get all the suits to flash down across the screen one after another, like a ticker-tape parade. She treated herself to a celebratory jelly bean every time she won. She had a special affection for the King and Queen of Hearts, and tried to save them for as long as possible, leaving them as the last to be demolished and the last to be destroyed.

When she told Roy this, on their quiet ride home in his rickety truck, he laughed, thinking she was joking. She didn't correct him, because she knew how lame it sounded; and the next evening, when he asked how her day had been, she made something up about Michael having a fight with Dwight because she didn't want to have to tell him that a Solitaire victory had been the high point of her day. Besides, she knew he got annoyed with her if she told the same joke too many times or repeated a lame comment he didn't like.

So she didn't voice the hazy metaphors that haunted her through the dull troughs and dry spells of the workday. Days and weeks and months passed, ticking by into orderly, identical rows like the completed suits lining up at the bottom of her screen. Roy spent his nights and weekends drinking beer on the couch and watching the game. Pam often wondered how professional athletes ever had time to sleep in between all of their games; probably while normal people were at work. Because whenever Roy wasn't working, there was _always_ a game to watch.

Pam slowly got used to the feeling of frustration that came when you worked and sweated and did your best to get the cards to line up, only to get to the end and realize you were trapped, with no moves and no way to win and nothing to do but give up and start over, hoping against hope that maybe it would be better this time.

Then the game started to invade her home life, too, creeping onto her computer screen when she was writing e-cards to her mom, or signing Roy's name to emails or looking up impossible art internships online. She started losing minutes, hours, to the blank trance of boredom that Solitaire inspired in her.

She compared it to fog, the thick white mist that clouded her thoughts when she didn't get enough sleep. Or it was like a heart-monitor flatline; the high, dead, constantly annoying tone of her life.

It was then that she started getting worried; because it was one thing to lose herself in a stupid card game when she was stranded on the desert isle of the receptionist's desk amid the stifling sea of boredom that was the office. It was one thing to be solitary and shy in a room full of co-workers who were completely indifferent to her at best and downright hated her at worst. But it was an entirely different thing to be playing a card game instead of spending time with the man she loved; to feel like being solitary, alone, instead of talking to the man who was going to be her husband very soon…

Well, maybe "soon" wasn't the right word. He was going to be her husband someday. They just hadn't decided exactly which day that someday would be.

The King and Queen of hearts started to look more appealing, and more impossible, every day.

When she had first taken the job at Dunder Mifflin, Pam had promised herself that she wouldn't keep it for more than a year. Roy had gotten it for her, and that had been a nice gesture as well as an economic necessity; after all, he was happy there, so he assumed that logically she would be, too. And she _was _happy, or at least she wasn't unhappy, and maybe that was enough. But she couldn't quite shake the feeling that she could be doing other things, bigger things, no matter what Roy said or implied.

She started having nightmares about mummification, about suffocating in the folds of her own wedding dress and drowning in a tide of faceless cards.

And then one day she won a game of Spider Solitaire, and the little animated fireworks lit something in her brain and she realized she'd been sitting at the receptionist's desk for over a year and a half and hadn't given it a second thought.

No, that wasn't right. She had given it thousands of thoughts. It was just that playing Solitaire was a wonderful way to avoid those thoughts – it sucked them right in and made them vanish, a tame little black hole that did away with everything but the ability to line up the little cards. Just like her days at Dunder Mifflin; an infinitely repeating little universe in which nothing ever changed. Just like her nights with Roy. A microcosm within a microcosm. An eternity of mirrors that repeated over and over until even the surface of things stopped changing.

And then, one ordinary day, _he _came.

He seemed nice enough. A little gangly, a little awkward, but he'd been amusingly nervous when he'd walked in and had smiled at her with all the intensity and insecurity of first-day jitters. Pam found herself liking his smile; it was warm and genuine and unreserved, so surprising and strong that it pulled her out of her normal phone-answering drone mode, her ordinary Solitaire stupor.

But she quickly shook herself out of it, and returned to her game as the new guy – Jim, he'd introduced himself as – got down to the not-so-serious business of flooding the world's high schools and hospitals with adequate office supplies.

Apparently the world's high schools and hospitals were in pretty good shape paperwise, because in less than a half hour Jim was up and out of his chair, wandering around and checking out the break room, the kitchen, the supply closet. He reminded Pam of a curious little kid exploring a new playground, and the thought made her smile; he was so tall, but there was something boyish about him, something excited and almost playful. She felt a pang of regret when she thought that life at Dunder Mifflin would soon cure him of that.

She watched him curiously as he completed his cursory inspection of the office and started wandering towards her, eventually coming to rest beside her desk and rooting through the jellybean dish.

"Can I have one of these?" he asked quietly, a red one already halfway to his mouth. She nodded. He rewarded her with another surprisingly charming smile and popped the jellybean into his mouth triumphantly. "So," he sighed, leaning one elbow on her desk. "So, ah, Pam – what do you do for fun around here? I mean, if for any reason I just have to take a break from the thrilling world of paper sales?"

Pam raised an eyebrow at him, wondering what he was doing, what he _thought _he was doing. "You've only been here half and hour and you're already looking for ways to goof off," she said, and was shocked to hear that instead of scolding she was almost giggling. This was uncharted territory; she didn't know what she was thinking. "Such a rebel," she added, teasingly, almost without meaning to.

Something in his eyes pulled it out of her, something that made her smile and twirl a lock of hair around her finger like a silly preteen. There was a strange pressure in her ribs that she almost didn't realize was laughter. She couldn't remember the last time she'd laughed at work, or even at all.

He leaned closer, both arms on her desk, his shoulders bent and his elbow in danger of knocking over the candy dish. "Actually, I'm just bored," he whispered conspiratorially. "I finished everything Michael told me to do for the whole day."

"In fifteen minutes? Wow, that's impressive. It took the last guy almost twenty." The teasing tone was new to Pam; she liked the way it felt on her tongue, warm and golden.

"I knew it! It's _not _just me that's bored out of my mind." He looked so pleased with himself, like he'd solved some great mystery. "So, tell me," he pursued. "What do you do for fun?"

"Nothing much," Pam sighed, inviting him to lean over and look at her computer screen with a wave of her hand. He promptly obliged. "I play Solitaire. Pretty much all day. Sometimes I answer the phone." He nodded, as though that was a completely valid and non-pathetic answer. Thinking that maybe he hadn't understood, Pam continued, "That's really just it. I sit up here by myself all day… it's really boring. You probably want to talk to someone else. I'll bet you can find something way more interesting…"

Now it was his turn to raise an eyebrow at her, slightly puzzled. And maybe it was her overactive imagination, maybe it was what Roy called the silly artist part of her, but something in his expression seemed to say that no, he didn't want to talk to someone else. He wanted to talk to _her_.

"It's just a stupid game," she near-whispered. Her heart was hammering in her chest, and her breath was coming short, and she didn't really understand why. This guy didn't seem to understand that he was supposed to leave her alone – everyone else did – and she couldn't think of a way to tell him…

"Hmm." He looked dead serious, grave and thoughtful, for about thirty seconds. "That sounds really amazing," he said solemnly. "But if you ever get tired of that, I might have a better idea… you know that guy Dwight who sits next to me? Yeah, of course you do. Well –" his voice dropped into that conspiratorial whisper again, and Pam leaned a little closer to hear, ignoring the fluttering in her ribcage and the ringing in her ears. "How do you think he'd react if one of his bobbleheads ended up in a block of Jell-o?"

Pam stared at him for a moment, thinking. Then a slow smile spread across her face, an expression that Jim eagerly matched.

He took that as permission and a pledge of help. "Good," he murmured. "Stay here. I'll be right back."

He gave her one last golden grin and turned around, sauntering easily back to his desk as though nothing was afoot. Taking her cue, Pam turned back to her computer screen, ignoring the crash and clatter of several bobbleheads falling to the floor (and one being pocketed amidst the confusion).

Pam closed the Spider Solitaire window and opened up her email instead. She was getting a strange tingling feeling all over, and she suddenly felt like inventing sign languages and tapping on her desktop with a pencil and pretending it was Morse code. She'd never had a partner in crime before – Solitaire was exactly that, solitary. But now…

She glanced involuntarily at the window to the kitchen, where Jim was busy with something that kept his hands hidden from view. He looked up at the same moment; their eyes met, and he smiled at her, and if something jumped between them like a lightning spark, Pam didn't waste too much time thinking about it. Instead she smiled back, and decided to get rid of the Solitaire function on her computer for good.

She had a feeling that she'd found a new office pastime.

**ii. Dance Dance Revolution**

_January 3rd, 2005_

At the beginning of Michael's birthday party (that was also for Kevin's skin cancer, but what skin cancer had to do with a roller rink no one knew), Jim had been a bit apprehensive. After all, he hadn't worn ice skates in probably ten years, maybe more. The surface of the rink was slick and shiny and made Jim think all too vividly of slipping and sliding and breaking bones. But before long it all came back to him, and he wasn't as flashy or sure on his feet as Michael, but he wasn't about to kill himself accidentally, either.

Pam, on the other hand…

"Hey! Careful, Beesley!" Jim lunged forward and grabbed Pam's arm, barely managing to keep her from falling. His momentum carried them both into a half-turn; Pam shrieked, tried to lean on him for support, and before they knew it they both ended up sprawled out on the ice, gasping for breath and laughing.

"Okay, it's official," Pam announced, pushing herself into a sitting position. "We really, really suck at ice skating."

"Speak for yourself," Jim answered, and raised an arm to shield his face as Michael went shooting by, throwing up a wake of frost. Pam hadn't reacted fast enough; Jim turned to smile at her as she groaned and tried to brush the frigid white flakes off the front of her coat.

"You missed a spot," he teased. Pam just stuck her tongue out at him and stared contemplatively at her skates, trying to think how best to stand up. Jim wanted to say that she really had missed a spot – there were flecks of ice and snow in her hair, glinting in the harsh light and… on second thought, he hoped she wouldn't notice.

His attention was distracted as she sighed, stretching her legs out in front of her and glaring at the blades of her skates. Jim's breath caught in his throat; suddenly he wanted nothing more than to bring back that smile, the one that lit up her whole face when he did something dorky or clever.

"Well, I think that's enough falling and humiliation for one day," he sighed, climbing to his feet and gliding over to stand above her, holding out a hand. "Want to hit the arcade?"

He braced himself and pulled her to her feet, and was rewarded with a smile of pure gratitude. "Absolutely I do," she answered, and managed to keep pace beside him to the edge of the ice. They ditched their skates and found their shoes where they'd stowed them under a bench, then headed for the other half of the huge building, where a handful of kids were shooting aliens and racing hot rods on narrow screens.

"Okay, let's see what we have here," Jim said critically. It wasn't much. "Air hockey… Whack-a-mole…" he paused, and Pam glanced over at him just in time to see his eyes light up. "Oh, yes. _Yes_." He grabbed her hand and pulled her through the maze of rickety games until they reached the object of his desire.

"You have got to be kidding me," Pam groaned. The DDR game was beat up, scraped and dented, but still in working order. The paint on the dance pad had been worn almost to nothing by thousands of sneakers. "I can't believe you're going to get on that thing."

Jim was grinning so hard Pam was afraid his face would break. "Oh, I'm not," he assured her. "_You _are."

She burst out laughing – then, as he didn't take his eyes off her, realized that he wasn't kidding. "No I'm not," she told him. "I don't know what you're smoking, Halpert, but you'd better take some more of it if you think I'm – what?" He was still grinning at her, with an odd slant to his eyes.

"Come on," he coaxed. "I'll buy a bag of chips when we get back to the office. No – ten." She shook her head. "Twenty?" She glared at him. "Come on, Beesley," he pursued. "You know what they say – everyone has their price. What will it cost me to get you on this game?"

"Stop it, Jim!" she exclaimed, but Jim was fluent in the language of her mouth and eyes, and he could tell that she wasn't really angry. "You don't want to see me dance. Trust me," she added.

"I don't know, Pam. You've lied to me before. Why should I trust you now?" She rolled her eyes, but Jim was too close to give up now. "I really do want to see you dance. In fact, I dare you!"

"You _dare_ me?" she repeated. "How old are you, twelve?"

But her sharp-edged smile gave Jim goosebumps, and she was already peeling off her coat. She stepped unsteadily up onto the platform; Jim leaned on the console, waiting while she punched in buttons and picked a song.

"Ready, Beesley?" he taunted, as the first rolling surge of music broke from the tinny speakers. Pam didn't have time to answer; she was too busy staring at the screen, trying to keep up with the little colored arrows.

She had been right; she really was a pretty bad dancer, if you could call this dancing. Jim grinned as he watched her, with the tip of her tongue poking out as she concentrated, and her cheeks flushed pink from the cold and the adrenaline of the pounding music…

_She's adorable, _a voice whispered silently, from somewhere deep in the recesses of Jim's brain; but that was a poisonous, dangerous thought. He quickly distracted himself by calling out, "You were right, Beesley. You dance like a dork."

Apparently his secret thoughts were leaking through into his voice, because instead of sticking her tongue out or looking offended, Pam smiled at him; the full, golden grin that made Jim's heart shudder alarmingly.

Oblivious to his discomfort, Pam turned back to the screen – but that moment of distraction had thrown her off, and on the next step her foot hit the edge of the platform at an awkward angle. She yelped in surprise and fell sideways, scrabbling for balance; Jim dashed to her rescue, leaning quickly so that she fell against him instead of the solid concrete floor.

"Jeez, Pam, what is with you today?" he chuckled, as she dug her nails into his chest, trying to regain her footing. "Can't you go two seconds without falling?"

"Shut up," Pam murmured, and Jim thought he could feel her blush of embarrassment scorching his skin through his coat and his shirt. "It was your idea in the first place, _Halpert_."

"Right. Sorry," he murmured, because he had suddenly noticed how _close _they were, how she was practically in his arms and the sweet scent of her perfume suddenly rose up around him in a dizzying cloud. The realization of her body pressed up against his hit him like a punch to the head; he sucked in a deep breath, trying to hide his startled pain.

Too late. Pam suddenly backed away, wrapping her arms around herself against the freezing cold, and Jim could breathe again. "Sorry," she said quickly, reaching behind her for the coat which she'd draped over the edge of the platform. "Did I step on your foot or something? You look like you'd gotten hurt," she clarified at Jim's raised eyebrow.

"Oh – oh, no, it wasn't you," Jim stuttered, still coming down from the heroin high of having her in his arms. He wanted nothing more than to take that look of shame and sorrow off her face. "No, I, uh…" his left hand moved to the spot on his right arm where she had held onto him for balance. "I think I bruised myself out there on the ice," he lied. "No big deal."

"Oh," Pam sighed, and her relief was palpable, maybe for the change of subject, Jim wasn't sure. "Did you fall, too?" She drew close again, pressing the wounded spot with her fingertips, warm through the thin cloth of his sleeve. Jim hissed in pain that was only half faked.

"Yeah," he sighed. Pam opened her mouth to answer, but then Michael was clomping towards them on his oversized hockey skates, yelling that it was time to open presents. Pam smiled, giving Jim's hand a sympathetic squeeze, then started off across the floor to where the office workers were gathering around a long table.

Jim stayed where he was for a minute, breathing deeply, then followed Pam towards Michael's celebration. He slid into the empty seat next to her, nodding to his co-workers as they passed around birthday and get-well-soon cards. Gifts were heaped high in the middle of the table, most of them in bags from Jim and Pam's shopping trip earlier in the day.

As Pam herself handed Michael the first present, Jim fixed a smile in place and thought back to her question a few minutes before – _Did you fall? _

Pam's hand brushed his as she reached for the next gift in the pile, and Jim was forced to catch his breath as a spark of electricity jolted him. He shook his head, trying to clear it; he had learned she was engaged the first day he met her, but sometimes he still had days like today, when he tried to forget that vital fact and when he seriously considered telling her what he had barely managed to tell himself…

In his head, he answered her question differently – though he couldn't keep himself from shooting her a crooked grin, because even in his head it sounded corny. Yes, he _had_ fallen, and was still falling -- just not quite the way she meant.

**iii. Hide and Seek**

_September 28th, 2006_

A storm was gathering over Scranton. Huge, black-bellied clouds scudded across the horizon, threatening rain. The sunlight, which had been bright and brilliant that morning, was weak and watery and gray; and the Scranton office park, which wasn't beautiful at the best of times, looked more desolate than ever. A single sheet of sodden newspaper drifted across the bleak, lonely stretch of asphalt, and nothing else moved.

Pam leaned back with a groan, resting against the generator on the roof of the building. The metal was cold against her shoulder blades, and the machine's gentle whirring shook up her brain and made it hard to think. She didn't mind.

Thinking had only gotten her into trouble lately. Thinking the Jim who came back from Stamford would be the same Jim who left… Thinking she could really still have a relationship with Roy… Thinking honesty was better than the lies she'd been living for so many years.

The first cold raindrop splashed against her forehead. She didn't wipe it away. Instead she closed her eyes, feeling it run down her cheek like the tears she was far too tired to shed.

The second raindrop hit the concrete roof right next to her hand. In her mind, its impact sounded like angry shouts and breaking glass. She had to remind herself that she wasn't at Poor Richard's, with the heat and light and bad music and smashing bottles and Roy's roar of anger ringing in her ears…

The faint clattering of footsteps jogged her memory, and she opened her eyes onto the unlovely scenery of Scranton and the cold concrete lines of the rooftop. She'd left the trapdoor open; and now she could hear, faint but unmistakable, the creaks and clanks of someone climbing the metal ladder from the hall below.

She quickly closed her eyes again, and took a deep breath to calm her racing heart. She hadn't seen the climber, but there was only one other person who came up onto the roof with any frequency, and only one person who would know to look for her here.

Sure enough, his voice came minutes later, slow and sweet against the far-off rumbling of the storm. "Hey," he said casually, as though it wasn't at all unusual to find her sitting up on the roof in a thunder shower in the middle of the day.

She expected him to say something like, "What are you doing up here?", or "I've been looking all over for you," but he didn't. In fact, he didn't say anything at all. For a long moment, there was no sound but the hushed beginnings of the rain.

Then an odd scraping noise broke the silence, and Pam opened her eyes to see Jim hunched over with his back to her, doing something on the concrete of the roof.

"What are you doing?" she asked softly. Jim straightened up and brushed his hands together, freeing a cloud of white dust that got all over his nice jacket; as he took a step back, Pam caught sight of a piece of chalk and a bunch of white lines at his feet.

"Michael told me to come up here," he answered. Pam took a deep breath as her heart plummeted in disappointment. "He wants to practice shooting hoops, and Darryl kicked him out of the warehouse." He indicated the chalk, and the lines which Pam could now see formed one corner of a basketball court.

"Oh. Okay." Pam leaned back against the generator, pulling her knees up to her chest. What could she say? That she'd thought and hoped he was looking for her? That he _would _have come looking for her, before Stamford, and now that he was back the look on his face said clearly he was running an errand for Michael, and nothing more?

She'd been avoiding him all morning. She had pointedly not looked up from her computer all day, and when they went on break, she was careful never to be in the same room with him. When he was in the break room, she fled to the kitchen, and when he came into the kitchen looking for a fresh cup of coffee, she took shelter in the shadow of the vending machines. It had been difficult and nerve-racking. To judge from the emotionless expression on his face, it had apparently had no effect on him at all.

Jim waited for a moment, then turned away from her again and looked out instead over the storm-studded view. "Lovely weather we're having," he said, and his voice was so dead and neutral it made Pam want to cry. It was the voice of someone who was shell-shocked, brain-dead; where was her Jim, the Jim who had been so happy, so alive, so much like sunlight in her gray, boring days?

"Where's Karen?" she asked wearily. She was long past caring about Karen; she just wanted to look at him, to look _for _him, to see if she could find that old Jim buried in his eyes.

He turned around to look down at her, and his eyes were completely normal, unreadable and flat. "Out on a sales call," he said simply. Pam nodded and closed her eyes again; she heard Jim kneel down on the concrete again and go to work with the chalk.

After a while she said his name, and the scratching of chalk on concrete stopped, though he didn't turn around again. "There's something I should tell you," she murmured. "I don't know if you noticed, but I've kind of been… hiding… from you. All morning. It's just that…" She tried to twist her wedding ring around her finger, her favorite nervous habit, and then she remembered she didn't have a wedding ring anymore. "In case you were wondering why I wasn't talking to you…"

She trailed off, desperate and not even bothering to hide it. Jim didn't move; he seemed frozen, crouched with his back to her, and not even the back of his neck told her anything about what he was thinking. When had he gotten so hard to read, so hard to find?

"Jim?" she whispered, and he flinched, as though he's been slapped. At least it showed he was still alive.

"I'm sorry," he said woodenly. "I… I hadn't noticed." That was a lie. He had noticed, Pam knew he had – it was just that it wasn't his problem anymore. "So, what's the reason?"

"I told Roy about us," Pam said flatly. She gave up on finding any hint of emotion in the way he held his shoulders, his monotone voice. She was too tired for this, too tired to keep talking to a man who wasn't there and apparently didn't want to be found. "About the… kiss. On Casino night."

There it was again – he froze, like a deer in headlights, like a silhouette carved in stone. Pam wondered vaguely if he'd stopped breathing.

"I just thought I should tell you," she added wearily. "In case he says anything. He was pretty mad last night." She wouldn't cry, she wasn't shaking, that catch in her voice was from exhaustion, nothing more. "I just thought you should know."

More time passed. The rain was falling faster now, pattering on the rooftop. Pam found herself thinking that Jim's jacket would get wet, and that this New Stamford Jim would probably care about something like that.

Finally she couldn't take it anymore. "What is _wrong_ with you?" she cried, suddenly angry, suddenly _furious_. "Where did you go?" She wanted to get up and shake him, slap him, get something from him, some sign of emotion – she'd take anything at all. If he screamed, cursed, told her hated her – _anything_ other than this terrible silence.

She'd lived with silence for too long. She didn't want to deal with it anymore.

The agonized question hung in the air, lingering like smoke that the rain couldn't, wouldn't wash away. Pam could only stare, a little terrified but mostly numb, as Jim unfolded himself and stood at his full height, hands in his pockets, looking down at her with an expression she couldn't read.

If the old Jim gleamed in his eyes for a fraction of a second, she didn't see it.

"I went to Stamford, Pam," he said quietly. "That's a silly question."

She could have handled anything else.

The rain was falling in full force now, hopefully hard enough to disguise her tears. Pam suddenly found that she didn't really care. She let her head fall back against the generator, so hard that it hurt, and she didn't mind the wave of dizziness it caused.

Maybe she heard him say "Goodbye," softly, almost below the edge of hearing. Maybe it was just her imagination, more wishful thinking and foolish hopes. Either way, when she dared to open her eyes again, he was gone.

Her lunch break was probably over. There was a little overhang above the generator that had kept her mostly dry, but people would still ask questions if she went back to her desk with damp shoes and a tear-streaked face. She didn't want to go back to her desk, anyway. She didn't want to go back to her life. She wanted…

The thought burst into her brain unbidden, like a sudden storm. She wanted to go to Stamford, and find the unfamiliar office that would still feel the same as the one she worked in every day. She wanted to go looking in that other break room and that other kitchen and see if she could find that other desk where he'd be waiting for her, the old Jim, with his messy hair and welcoming smile… hiding in plain sight. Because he couldn't be gone, not for good, she wouldn't let herself accept that. He was just lost, left behind in Connecticut, and if she looked she could find him again…

She glanced over at the half-finished chalk drawing on the concrete. There was no hidden message there, no secret sign, no little symbol of smiley face or heart or anything. And even if there had been, it was probably gone. The white lines were bleeding into each other, melting away under the force of the rain. Soon they would disappear completely.

After a while, the rain stopped, and Pam pulled herself together and went inside.

**iv. Truth or Dare**

_October 31st, 2006_

Sometimes Jim was amazed how little his life had changed since high school. He still spent all day sitting bored in an ugly building where he didn't want to be. He still had people who probably weren't as smart as he was trying to tell him things. He still watched the clock with the alertness of a trapped animal. And sometimes, he still did stupid things without entirely knowing why.

For example, leading a dozen grown men and women in a no-holds-barred game of Truth or Dare.

He reached out and took the flashlight from Kevin, wiping it surreptitiously on his jeans to remove some of the dampness. He wondered why Kevin kept a flashlight in his desk, anyway. And he wondered why Michael had decided Truth or Dare would be a good game for Halloween – and why he had made them all sit in a circle on the floor with the lights turned off. Jim didn't remember that being part of the rules.

But it was not up to him to fathom the muddled depths of Michael's mind. Instead, he swept the flashlight slowly around the circle, resisting the urge to shine it up under his chin. The circle of light passed over the faces of his co-workers, illuminating expressions that varied from rapt to suicidal. Andy… Meredith… Ryan…

The flashlight blinked to Angela, and Jim skipped onto the next person. Angela was Not Playing. She was in the circle, but something about her stance set off self-preservation instincts screaming in the back of Jim's brain. Stanley simply wasn't playing, but Angela was _Not Playing_, so severely and disapprovingly that it needed the capital letters.

After almost a full trip around the circle, the dancing glow of the flashlight came to a stop on Jim's chosen victim. "…Karen," he intoned solemnly, in the sort of voice that usually said things like _this is your mission, should you choose to accept it._ "Truth or Dare?"

Karen paused for a minute, sizing him up. "Dare," she answered with a wicked grin. The circled murmured in approval. "Come on, Halpert," she taunted, as he tried to think up a suitable dare. "Do your worst."

"Fine." Jim looked around the half-lit office for inspiration, though he kept the flashlight trained on Karen. "I dare you… to prank call David Wallace."

The rest of the workers in the circle groaned, and Michael smacked himself in the forehead with an open palm. "Jeez, Jim!" he exclaimed. "You can't go easy on her just cause she's your girlfriend! What are you, sissy? No, that one doesn't count," he said hastily, as Karen started to get up and reach for the phone. "That was a sucky dare," Michael complained. "Go again. Pick another one. And make it _good _this time!"

"Dares cannot be rescinded, Michael," Dwight murmured, but Michael glared at him and he shut up.

"Fine…" Jim thought for a moment, then grinned. "Karen, I dare you to TP Michael's office."

Karen grinned back, and before Michael had a chance to protest she had left the circle, and gone back to the women's bathroom in search of toilet paper. Then, while Kevin chuckled approvingly and Michael muttered to himself, she came back to the outer office and made quick work of her dare. Michael's desk was thoroughly mummified in a matter of minutes.

"Nice work," Jim congratulated her as she took her place in the circle again, to Kevin's enthusiastic applause. "You're practically a professional."

She stuck her tongue out at him, and before she could come up with a more eloquent response, Michael cut her off. "Enough with the googly-eyes already!" he exclaimed, trying unsuccessfully to snatch the flashlight from Jim's hand. "Slim Jim, you suck at this game," he announced. "You've got to for the good stuff, for the _love _lives! Where is the lip-action?"

He paused, apparently expecting an answer. Jim wished the camera was there; failing that, he stared wide-eyed and tight-lipped into the darkness.

Michael gave up, letting out a cavernous sigh. "I guess it's all up to me again," he groaned. "Michael Scott, Truth or Dare _Master_! Don't worry, Jim, I'll teach you how it's done. Go again." The flashlight ticked slowly, ominously around the circle again, but Michael jumped in before Jim could build up any suspense. "Oh, I know! Ask Pam!"

Jim's hand twitched almost of its own accord, and the flashlight jumped to one particular face, one he'd been glossing over and trying to avoid all night (not to mention all the weeks since he'd been back from Stamford). Pam suddenly looked deathly pale; he couldn't tell if it was because of the harsh glow of the flashlight, or because she'd blanched when she met his eyes. He could feel the color draining out of his own face, and for the first time all night he gave a silent prayer of thanks for the semidarkness.

The silence had stretched on for too long, and Jim remembered with a jolt what he was supposed to be doing. "Okay… Pam," he sighed. He was afraid his hands were shaking, but the flashlight's beam was steady. "… Truth or Dare?"

The wound-tight tension in the pause that followed was probably all in his imagination.

"Truth," Pam said quietly, and Jim tried to hide his surprise; he recognized Fancy New Beesley in her voice, because only Fancy New Beesley would have dared to speak that strongly and that simply and stare him right in the eye. Simple Old Beesley would have murmured and looked down.

Courage was new in her, and it scared him – because he had always been the brave one, the one to make himself vulnerable, lay his soul bare. And even though it was only a stupid childish game for a stupid childish holiday, he could see plainly in her eyes that baring her soul was exactly what she was doing. Here, now, in front of everyone, she had found the courage that she'd been lacking for so many years.

It wasn't the first time she'd surprised him like this since he'd come back. Fancy New Beesley kept ambushing him, leaping out from behind an ordinary question, lying in wait underneath harmless jokes and banter, ready at any second to force him up against the wall and say those three words, those dreadful forbidden words that he could feel pointed like a pistol at his head.

And it scared him, because he'd survived two bullet wounds already and now he was ready to give up, surrender, and patch together what was left of his life into some semblance of peace.

But she wouldn't let him. Even now, even here, she was undeterred by the stupidity of their surroundings. Her eyes were wide despite the glare of the flashlight, and her lips were pressed into a hard, thin line, and she was terribly vulnerable. She'd sworn to tell the truth, and she would, unconditionally, no matter what. The rules of the game gave her no choice. The rules of the game gave Jim one question. One truth. One chance.

That was Fancy New Beesley's fault. And Fancy New Beesley was in her every glance and every breath – he could practically hear her begging him to ask her _that _question. _The _question. To go right for the heart of the silence, right for the love life, like Michael had told him to. She was daring him. Taunting him –

"Jim?"

Karen's voice startled him so much that the flashlight slipped in his hand, crashing down to land lightbulb-first in the carpet. He recovered it quickly, fixing a smile in place.

"Sorry," he murmured. "Just thinking. What would be a really good question…?"

Now there was a faint smile on Pam's face; Jim felt it more than saw it, and he refused to fix the flashlight on her again. Instead, he tossed it from hand to hand, lighting up swirling flicker-dreams on the ceiling. He was surprised to find that he was angry – how dare she taunt him like that? How dare she dare him? She should have been timid and afraid. She always had been before.

Jim sucked in a deep breath, let it out slowly, calming himself down. But he couldn't shake the small, terrible wish that she would go back to being the old Pam, the terrified and un-defiant Pam, the one who didn't look at him with eyes so full of honesty that he was afraid to think of what she might say…

Because he couldn't shake the thought that one of them was always going to have to be afraid, afraid of the truth and its consequences. And if it wasn't her, then it was going to have to be him.

"Jim!"

"Fine. Fine. Um… Worst first date?"

This time Michael actually did manage to grab the flashlight away, and he smacked Jim in the head with it, just hard enough to sting. "Man! You totally suck at this game!" he cried. "What kind of a lame question is that?"

_The wrong one_, Jim thought to himself. She'd given him a chance, a free truth, and he'd missed it. He could almost feel Pam's disappointment radiating across the circle, pressing down on his chest until he couldn't breathe. He could just as easily sense her abashed smile, the way she'd try to cover it up and not look his way for days to come.

Michael blew out a frustrated sigh and shook his head. "Okay, Jim loses. It's my turn –"

"Actually, Truth or Dare is not a competitive game," Dwight interjected. "The only way to lose is to fail to complete a dare. Jim has not –"

"Shut _up_, Dwight!" Michael shouted, then quickly swept the circle and brought the flashlight to bear on a new victim. "So, Phyllis," he cackled, "what's the most embarrassing thing you and Bob…"

Jim tuned Michael out, Dwight's brief comment still rattling in his brain. He didn't know a lot about the official Rules of Truth or Dare, but he knew the bottomless, pitch-black feeling slowly creeping up his ribcage and settling around his heart. He knew the sense of wasted opportunity and the regret so sanded down by repetition that he hardly noticed it anymore.

Maybe Dwight was right. But even if he was, Jim knew the look in Pam's eyes that was half-pity and half-anger. He knew that the real rules of the game didn't matter, just like Karen's triumphant smile from across the circle didn't matter.

Jim knew that, in some timeless and irrevocable way, he had lost.

**v. Spin the Bottle **

_February 14th, 2008_

"Come on, everybody, gather 'round!" Michael yelled, his enthusiasm completely lost on his employees. "As I'm sure you all know, today is a very special day –"

"Are we getting off work early?" Stanley grumbled.

"No, Stanley, don't be silly. We're going to –"

"Is it International Talk Like a Pirate Day?" Pam called from behind her desk. "I found it online," she explained, as the office staff fixed her with several bored and puzzled stares.

"What?" Michael said, exasperated. "No, Pam, don't be stupid. It's –"

"Oh! I know! Is it Opposite Day?" Jim volunteered.

"Of course it's not Opposite Day, Jim," sneered Dwight. "I would have informed the office if it was. As Chief Enforcer in the Employ of the Party Planning Committee, it would be my job to ensure that the Opposite Day rules were followed."

"Ah, but if it's Opposite Day, you would tell me that it's not," Jim said quickly. "Everything you say means the opposite."

"Fine," Dwight groaned, rolling his eyes. "Then it _is _Opposite Day."

"Yes! I knew it!" Jim punched the air in triumph, then held one hand palm-out towards reception; Pam gave him an air high-five.

"No! Shut up, all of you!" Michael bellowed. "Jeez, what is wrong with you people? It's February 14th, for crying out loud! Valentine's Day!"

"Oh, right, forgot about that one," Jim murmured. Michael shot him a glare.

"And in _honor _of this sacred love-day," Michael continued doggedly, "we are going to play the best game of all time…"

"Scrabble!" Jim yelled, at the same moment Pam said, "Hopscotch?"

"Holy freaking…" Michael trailed off, grumbling to himself, as Jim and Pam grinned madly at each other across the three feet that separated them. "I don't know what is wrong with you guys today. And just so you know, I am _amazing_ at hopscotch," he added, then reached behind his back and grabbed something from off of his desk. "No, we are going to play the official game of Valentine's Day… spin the bottle!" He pulled out an empty beer bottle with little pink heart stickers all over it, and waved it with a flourish at the open-mouthed workers.

Jim edged over to reception as Michael tried to herd everyone else into the break room and get them into a circle. "Think he made that bottle himself?" he asked, out of the corner of his mouth.

"Absolutely," Pam snickered, and Jim couldn't help himself – he looked down at her, at the bright smile that lit up her eyes and felt like sunlight at the bottom of his soul. He couldn't help smiling himself, so wide it made his cheeks sting; his hands were itching to touch Pam's hair, to smooth the wild ringlets back where they fell over her shoulders, his heart suddenly throbbed and he wanted to kiss her so badly it hurt – a familiar ache in his soul that had been all but a part of him for so many years…

Maybe it the way she smiled, maybe it was something about the day itself, but suddenly Jim couldn't help but think back to this time last year, when he had been with Karen and Pam had been alone.

"Hey," he said softly, and she looked up, hearing something heavy in his voice, "have I ever told you how beautiful you are?"

Her eyes softened, and he reached to take her hand, only to find that she was already reaching for his. Even after so many months of dating, that small contact was enough to send a shiver down his spine – and while Michael yelled about romance from the next room, Jim's head filled with roses and rings and he could hardly think straight. He still couldn't believe it, sometimes… how lucky he was.

"Seriously," he said softly. Pam stood up and he pulled her into his arms, holding her tight and burying his face in her hair. "I know it's stupid and corny, but… you take my breath away. You know?" he added lamely, aware of how cheesy he sounded. He could feel the heat rush to his face, but even though he was embarrassed he couldn't keep the words back; they were literally true. Unless he could kiss her, it hurt to breathe.

"Yeah, I know," Pam whispered, and Jim was so caught up in her that he didn't see Michael heading towards them, looking determined. Pam pulled away, smiling up at him with a hint of mischief that made Jim insanely happy and afraid for his life at the same time. "I guess you'll just have to take it back then," she said.

"What?" he asked blankly, but before she could answer Michael was upon them, and then before he knew what was happening, Jim found himself chased into the break room and forced to take his place in the circle on the floor, right next to Michael and directly across from Pam.

"Now, before we start," Michael called, "I think you all should know something. _This_ is not just any ordinary bottle." He picked it up, exhibited it to the circle and got absolutely no reaction. "This, my friends, is a magic bottle. It shows you your one true love. I should know – I've played with it hundreds of times, ever since I was a kid."

Jim met Pam's eye, and found the same obvious question that was running through his mind reflected in her expression; then he shook his head, and she shrugged, and they shared a lightning grin and returned to the very serious business of acting like twelve-year-olds.

"Okay, here we go!" Michael cried, triumphant, flicking the bottle with his wrist; it skidded out into the middle of the circle and stayed still. Michael had to get up on his hands and knees to follow it, and flicked it again. This time it spun, and after a few wobbly seconds it came to rest again.

The neck pointed towards Angela. The bottom pointed at Dwight.

"Absolutely not," Angela huffed, standing up and crossing her arms over her chest. "This is a ridiculous game, and this entire thing is a frivolous waste of company time. Goodbye." She stalked out of the room, stepping disdainfully over her seated co-workers and giving the bottle a light kick for good measure.

"Jeez, what a party-pooper," Michael muttered, buffing the bottle off with his sleeve.

"Do not fear, Michael," Dwight said evenly – a little _too _evenly, Jim thought, glancing at his arch-nemesis out of the corner of his eye. Like he was trying to hide a quaver of excitement. "I am the Chief Party Enforcer," Dwight continued. "It is my duty to make sure all office workers abide by the rules of the party. I will deal with this… rebellion." He stood up swiftly and strode from the break room, slamming the door behind him.

Jim didn't need to look over at Pam to picture the look on her face. But he looked over at her anyway, because he really, _really _didn't want to see what was going on in the outer office.

"Okay, back to business," Michael announced, and sent the bottle spinning out into the middle of the circle again. It seemed to go on for an eternity; Jim found himself entranced by it, watching the gleam of the light on the brown glass as though it held all the secrets of the universe, his destiny and his future. Round and round it went. Was it getting faster? This was so stupid… why did he care…?

With an ominous noise like a dropped coin settling, the bottle began to slow down. Jim could feel his boss bouncing excitedly next to him. Slowly, slowly, the spinning thing came to a stop, with one last lazy half-turn that brought the neck around to point at… Pam?

Yes, it was definitely pointing at Pam; Jim smiled over at her as she blushed a deep scarlet, and started to push himself to his feet –

"That's Michael," Kevin called, and Jim froze, not understanding. A chorus of agreement rose from the rest of the office, and Jim just stared at them, blankly. The other end of the bottle was pointing at _him_. It had to be. Pam was his, she was his _girlfriend_, (finally after far too long) and if they thought _Michael_ was her – was going to –

Oh, no. No way. He was not going to be beaten, not now, not at this. Quickly and quietly, he reached out a foot and nudged the bottle just the tiniest bit. A fraction of an inch brought happiness from despair.

"Hey, that's cheating," Meredith called, and Jim slipped on his best innocent expression.

"Who, me?" he asked, feigning shock, as he could hear Pam trying to stifle a giggle from across the circle. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Jim, no fair!" Michael whined. "She's already off the market, you've gotta let other guys have a turn –"

"Um, no," Jim said quickly, fighting down a sudden wave of nausea. "Actually, if Pam kissed you she'd be cheating on me, and then I'd have to break up with her, and then we'd both be just miserable. You wouldn't want that, would you Michael? I mean, I thought you were my best friend…" Innocent wasn't good enough for this. Jim switched to soft-spoken despair. "You wouldn't betray me like this," he whimpered. "Would you?"

"Aw, Jim…" Michael looked torn for a second, then strengthened. "You're right, man. I'm sorry. Bro's before ho's, right? I dig what you're sayin'." He clapped Jim on the shoulder, nodding solemnly. "Yup. Pam's out, guys. Nobody messes with my friend Jimbo's girl."

There was a muffled groan from somewhere across the circle, which was probably why the look on Pam's face was somewhere halfway between horror and gratitude; Jim managed to catch her eye and jerked his head towards the door, making frantic motions with his hands and praying Michael didn't notice.

Pam, as usual, got the hint – Michael, as usual, didn't. Pam quickly stood up and fled for the safety of her desk, while Jim turned back to his boss. "Oh, man, I guess the thought of breaking up with me really upset her," he said solemnly. "I should probably…"

"Yes. Definitely. Go out there and play a little game of your own, if you know what I mean," Michael snickered, waggling his eyebrows in what he probably thought was a suggestive way.

"Yeah. Um, have fun with the rest of the game," Jim said quickly, and made good his escape, making sure to shut the door firmly behind him.

Pam was waiting for him, leaning against her desk with her arms crossed over her chest. "Nice moves in there," she admitted, but the prankster gleam in her eye told Jim he wasn't out of the woods yet. "But would you really have broken up with me?"

"If you'd kissed Michael? Absolutely," he chuckled, pulling her into his arms again and not really caring if their co-workers saw. "Then every time I kissed you, I'd have to think about kissing _him _– I could never look at you again. I'd have to go live in a cave somewhere and be a monk for the rest of my life."

Pam giggled, and the sound combined with the feeling of her pressed up against him suddenly made Jim dizzy and light-headed. "And believe me, being without you _sucks_, so I'd probably be the most miserable monk ever," he added softly.

Pam wasn't laughing anymore. "Oh, Jim," she sighed, resting her head on his chest and wrapping her arms around his waist in a quick hug. "I'm so sorry – I mean, I couldn't -- I just –"

"It's okay," he said quickly. He just wanted her to be happy, today of all days. "I know. I was just thinking about it – you know I love you, right?"

"Yeah, I know. I love you too." She pressed up onto her toes and kissed him, just a brief brush of her lips against his, and Jim felt the world explode.

Suddenly a thought nagged at the back of his brain, and he forced himself to focus, breathing deep and slow. "But I still feel kinda bad for pulling you out of that game," he commented, as casually as he could while struggling to breathe. "It might have been fun…"

Pam had known him long enough to know that something was up. "Yeah?" she murmured, sounding a little breathless herself. "You owe me one."

"Top desk drawer," Jim muttered, his face buried in her hair. Pam gently eased herself out of his grip and edged around her desk, rummaging around in the top drawer until she found his present.

"A bottle of beer?" she asked, confused but wary; this was a weird gift, even from Jim, whose powers of pranking knew no bounds. But he offered no explanation, only a smirk. Suspicious now, Pam weighed the bottle in one hand and found it strangely light; whatever it was full of, it definitely wasn't beer.

She pulled it open and upended it over her desk. A glint of silver foil fell out; a single Hershey's Kiss, and then another, and then more came pouring out of the bottleneck and bounced onto her keyboard, forming a neat little pile. She looked up at Jim, who was still grinning like a maniac. "That's to pay you back for all the kisses you'd miss by not playing Michael's game," he explained, with the familiar slant to his eyes that meant he was doing something incredibly dorky and he knew it and he didn't care. "I just couldn't stand them coming from anyone but me."

"Me neither," Pam said softly, and then she slipped out from behind the desk and grabbed Jim's face in her hands, catching off guard with a fierce kiss.

After a few seconds he broke away, gasping for air, pulling her in closer with one arm around her waist. "There you go doing it again," he complained. "Taking my breath away. Stop it."

"Shut up, Halpert," Pam growled, and this time it was Jim who captured her lips with his – but even as he leaned down he realized that it was no use, she'd gotten too deep into his heart and soul, no matter how many times he kissed her he probably would never get his breath back.

But that didn't mean he couldn't keep trying.

* * *

The End. Please continue your absolute wonderfulness, and review! 


End file.
